


A Lion Among Them

by taetaetiger (sexyvanillatiger)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Dark, Domestic Violence, Fate & Destiny, Infidelity, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Omega Verse, Werewolf Mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:35:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7467111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexyvanillatiger/pseuds/taetaetiger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chanyeol will be a good alpha. Chanyeol will make a good mate. Chanyeol will take care of Yixing until Yixing loves him, and he will take care of Yixing even if Yixing never loves him.</p>
<p>Still—sometimes, he likes to imagine Yixing already does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lion Among Them

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: wolf AU with hypermasculine culture, structural inequality between alphas and omegas, cultural acceptance of domestic violence, graphic depictions of violence and traumatic situations including miscarriage and emergency abortion.
> 
> Graciously translated into Spanish [here](https://www.wattpad.com/story/152962214?utm_source=android&utm_medium=link&utm_content=story_info&wp_page=story_details_button&wp_uname=rilapark_00&wp_originator=BHAebFsPXMa3kNy%2FdqqsbkeUZCruMT74x4D898acQU3qX0uqjs3UIqoRe1JEoNi%2BWiEO1ROQXG7VioxetwAvBI7ScXM1WG3qIsEDP5N1N2Fid1UlTbB4bOshHUVwXvO2&_branch_match_id=543940781629656198)!

“Strong,” the healer says, her eyes narrowed and her grip so firm that it almost hurts. Chanyeol sits still beneath her assessment, staring at her hard in an attempt to read her thoughts. Her expression is neutral, though; unreadable. Maybe a little bit tired. Maybe just bored. Her hands leave his shoulders and find his hips, which she pushes against with her thumbs. This hurts less. “Narrow,” she says. She works her thumbs inwards, pressing against his bladder so hard that Chanyeol thinks he might burst. She hums vaguely.

For the entire assessment, Chanyeol does not squirm, even when she lays him back and spreads his legs and touches him in way that makes him feel very small. He is still and quiet and patient, more patient than he thinks he’s ever been in his life. It’s worth it, because when she looks into his eyes, she’s smiling at him proudly, like a mother would. Chanyeol’s heart beats fast and hard; she knows what he wants to hear.

 

"My omega will be strong," Chanyeol says on the day the healer tells him that he will present within the season as the alpha he knew he would be. He hugs Yixing from behind, his hands trailing the firm curves of Yixing's arms. "My omega will be fertile," he says, dragging his hands down the flat planes of Yixing's stomach, stopping at the bony press of his hips. "And most of all," he says, hooking his chin on Yixing's shoulder and nuzzling him, "my omega will be pretty."

Yixing turns his head to smile at him, his lips full like the moon. Chanyeol grins back, giving Yixing a squeeze before dragging them down into the dirt. Yixing squirms at first, fighting him, but Chanyeol's strength is already beginning to come in. Yixing's struggles have since become an exercise in futility, so he doesn't bother working himself into exhaustion, letting it come naturally instead. If Chanyeol wants to nap with him in the dirt behind his hovel, then Chanyeol is going to have his nap. Yixing turns to pillow his head on Chanyeol's chest. Chanyeol relaxes his hold only enough to let him.

 

Their pack is large, more than one hundred strong. Yixing's mother used to say that it was easy to feel alone in a pack like this one. She came from a smaller pack, one of only a dozen wolves. She knew all of their names and their parents' names and the moons they were birthed under. Chanyeol doesn't even know the names of the pups who perished in his youth. He and Yixing are the only pups to have survived to adolescence in the two springs that separate them. The winters of those years took those any weaker, any less worthy of life.

Fate, Chanyeol says. It's always Fate. The moon watches over them, bringing them the good that they have earned. Chanyeol knows that he must have earned Yixing long before this life because when he came into this world, Yixing was already there waiting for him. As pups, he knew that he would survive whatever sickness or injury fell upon him because it would be the only way for him to take what is his.

His _mate_.

"Fate," he would tell Yixing whenever he became distressed over his late presentation. Two springs later than most wolves, Yixing had been a very old child in the eyes of their pack. "Your body was waiting for me," Chanyeol tells him, nosing at the sensitive skin over his stomach. "Now we will present together, and you will be mine."

Yixing, who is more practical than Chanyeol, indulges his fantasies. Chanyeol is tall, with a strong voice and broad shoulders. His frame is slim, but he’s already filling out. He is not the best hunter, but he is a fast learner, and a kind alpha more than anything. From a practical perspective, Chanyeol will make a good mate. But Chanyeol knows that he brings out something impractical in Yixing, something indulgent, something fantastic. He drags his nose up the furrow of Yixing’s chest to his sensitive neck, and Yixing has a fondness in his eyes that Chanyeol knows is love. Or if it isn’t love, it will be. Because Chanyeol will be a good alpha. Chanyeol will take care of Yixing until Yixing loves him, and he will take care of Yixing even if Yixing never loves him.

Still—sometimes, he likes to imagine Yixing already does.

 

Chanyeol begins to trail the hunters, but only with great reluctance. The healer urges him forward, the way his gentle omega father or sister would if they were alive. He has nobody to bring him along, forcing a space for him amongst the alphas, with his mother long since rotting in the earth. Instead, Chanyeol takes up a place behind them. Trotting a short ways behind when they take to the forest, earning little more than scraps of attention as they travel. Chanyeol had feared that he would be barred from accompanying at all; he accepts these spare glances and sniffs of disdain gratefully.

His wolf is still small, adolescent, its eyes blue but flecked with gold, guard hair beginning to grow through its fur. It’s a gangly thing, tumbling clumsily over most of the journey, but learning to do so quietly lest he is put out for the sake of the hunt. His paws are still too large for his body, but he’s growing into them. He makes more mistakes during the hunt than he knew he was allowed. The band of hunters seems to forget his presence before they can grow to contemn it.

They pay him no mind, so Chanyeol follows blindly. He realizes they are tracking a deer only when they’re so close he can almost see it. Several wolves break away, flanking the beast on the left and right before it even knows of their proximity. The smell of it is strong and mouth-watering; Chanyeol wonders if he will ever get the chance to bring Yixing home raw deer meat as a token of his affection. He crouches low in the grasses and watches as the hunters set upon their prey, dragging it down into the dirt before it can flee. Chanyeol trots forward, but not too close. Not close enough to be swiped at, should one of the hunters suspect him of stealing a scrap.

He crouches lower, timid and mistrustful, when the hunters step out of their furs and hoist the dead deer onto their shoulders to carry it back to the pack. When one of the alphas tears a pitiful shred of meat from the beast’s side and drops it onto the ground, Chanyeol waits until the last hunter is far out of sight before setting upon it. By the time he makes it back to the pack, the carcass has already been given to the older omegas to be skinned and soaked. Yixing, still just on the precipice of adulthood like Chanyeol, is too young to join them. He sits a ways away, doing needlework, instead. Chanyeol is not allowed to interrupt him, but he is allowed to curl up beside him, perhaps imagining the feeling of Yixing’s fingers in his fur. Perhaps not.

 

When he next takes up at the tails of the hunters, one drags him forward by his nape until he walks at their heels. Their stony disregard for his presence resurrects itself, only crumbling when he is lost from view. Other bands of alphas have gone off on other trails so as to best provide food for the entire pack. Chanyeol stays close to this group, only breaking away to tear a rabbit out of the ground before it can disappear into its hole. He carries it back to the alphas proudly, earning an affectionate nuzzle from a wolf he has never met.

He doesn’t get to keep the rabbit, but if he could, he would give it to Yixing. Yixing is the first wolf he seeks upon returning to the pack, almost tripping over his two long legs as he takes flight into Yixing’s arms. His first kill is still bloody on his face. Yixing laughs with him and licks him clean. Chanyeol’s face is sticky when he drags his cheek against Yixing’s, burying his nose into Yixing’s hair. He wraps himself so completely around Yixing that nothing but time can untangle them.

Yixing accepts him every time. His sweet smell grows stronger, the wet, musky scent of his sex so enticing that sometimes, Chanyeol upends him onto his back just to snuffle at it longingly. Yixing, in turn, takes the new breadth of his shoulders in hand, tracing the power in his arms, and fondling him where he hangs low and heavy between his legs. When Yixing does it, it’s not so uncomfortable. Instead, he squirms for a different reason. They fantasize about a home with pups in the abstract, but Chanyeol knows who he will see round with his seed. Every day that his stones hang lower and his scent grows deeper is a day closer to taking Yixing in his heart and his bed and making a claim so deep that the moon would blush to see it.

Until that day, he busies himself amongst the hunters and in the forests. He learns which alphas to track with and which alphas to avoid. He learns how to quiet his stalking and sharpen his senses and aim for the throat on the first bite. He isn’t a great hunter, but he will be one day. One day, Chanyeol knows that he will drag home an eagle if that’s what it will take to win Yixing’s affections. He will hunt the moon out of the sky to have his mate at his side. He hunts like this, knowing who he’s hunting for.

 

The full buck moon passes slowly, despite his newfound industry; summer stretches its long fingers across the land. The streams run brown with mud. The grasses exposed to the merciless sun are crisp and sharp underfoot. Within the season, Chanyeol will be an alpha. In this season of summer, Chanyeol grows with the swelter. He is so close, he is so close.

And yet, Chanyeol is still a child. He bounds into the clearing, dodging through the labyrinth of huts and cabins to find Yixing. Chanyeol has been out most of the day with those few alphas that have accepted him. He’s spent another day hunting. Today, not so much hunting as observing. And not so much observing as daydreaming about coming home. Something in the air is new, fresh, like spring, though the first blooms are an entire winter away. When they come, Yixing will be expecting his second heat. Or perhaps—Chanyeol will be expecting their first litter. Chanyeol shouts Yixing's name as he approaches his family's hut, the door opened wide to let clean air in. Yixing's grandmother comes out when he starts hollering again, a smile on her face even despite her annoyance.

"Where's Yixing?" Chanyeol asks her before she can ask him to leave.

"He's with the Alpha."

Chanyeol's gut drops. The world around him silences so that his heart sounds like thunder in his ears. Yixing's grandmother does not seem appropriately distressed. "Why? What's happened?" he hears his own choked voice asking, but it sounds foreign, far away, like somebody else is talking for him.

Yixing's grandmother smiles genuinely, seeming oblivious to his alarm. Her eyes glow with pride. "He's presented."

All at once, everything muffles. Chanyeol's pounding pulse feels excessive. The tightness of his stomach is uncomfortable. Nothing feels right. He breathes, brow furrowing. "Already?" His mind works slowly. The day is hot, Chanyeol is tired, Yixing is not here, Yixing is not here. Only when the information connects, that Yixing has presented, Yixing is an omega now, Yixing can take knots and conceive and be _claimed_ now—only then does Chanyeol's panic rush in, stronger than ever. He swallows thickly, vision greying as he asks Yixing's grandmother, "He—the Alpha—he wants Yixing for—?"

Yixing's grandmother has never looked more noble. Her chest puffs out and her chin rises up into the air. She looks large, even though she stands several heads blow him. “The Alpha is going to claim him."

"Oh." It's all Chanyeol can say. His throat is too dry to produce sound, his mind too crowded to manufacture words. He nods stiffly and turns away, the walk back to his own home wooden and stilted. It's painful, how quickly the entire world can change. Chanyeol is still waiting, still counting the turn of the moon, still a child to their pack. He was supposed to present first. He was supposed to be an alpha waiting for his omega to present, waiting with open arms. It was never supposed to be Yixing waiting for him. Omegas _can't_ wait; alphas claim, omegas are claimed.

The Alpha is not kind and he is not patient. Chanyeol hadn't even known he was awaiting Yixing's presentation, hadn't even known that he knew who Yixing was. The inevitability of it is sudden and breathtaking. Even if Chanyeol had presented first, there's nothing he could have done to stop the Alpha from voiding his claim, from taking Yixing right out of his arms. Yixing was never going to belong to him.

Yixing comes to his home later in the evening; Chanyeol can smell him from a distance. It’s a new scent, an adult scent, but Chanyeol would know it if he had no sense of taste or smell at all. Yixing doesn’t announce himself; he merely ignores the closed door and pushes his way inside. His neck is bruised and scabbed right across the muscle. Chanyeol pales when he sees it, his eyes wide and worried. "Gates of _hell_ , Yixing, are you alright?" he asks, reaching out but not daring to touch it.

Yixing beams, displaying his marked throat proudly. "Of course I am," he says, and Chanyeol realizes that he's pleased with his claim. Of course he is. Alpha's mate is an honor.

Chanyeol averts his eyes, the color returning to his cheeks when he asks, "Did he…when you, I mean, when you were claimed—did he—?"

"He took me," Yixing affirms. Chanyeol looks at him. That would be why Yixing is sitting tilted to the side, on his hip. Chanyeol sighs, burying himself in his bed. Yixing crawls up beside him, careful when he lays down. He seems sore. Chanyeol thinks that Yixing would never be sore if Chanyeol had been the one to take him. Chanyeol would be gentle. He would go slow. He would only do what Yixing asked of him. Yixing speaks, and Chanyeol draws his eyes up the pleasant curve of Yixing’s hip towards his face. ”He told me that he's been intent on claiming me since he saw me as a child."

"That's creepy," Chanyeol grouses into his furs. Yixing laughs, reaching forward to ruffle his hair.

"Don't be grumpy. I won't be able to come here anymore after you present. I want my time here to be happy while we still have it." Yixing's voice is light, buoyant, but his gaze is meaningful. He watches Chanyeol compellingly, the small smile at the corners of his lips hiding nothing.

Chanyeol stares back, his reddened eyes misting at the thought of their their impending separation. An overwhelming sense of powerlessness consumes him, breaking him like a leg snapped in a pitfall. He shuts his eyes, not wanting Yixing to see him crying, but of course he does. He swipes his thumb across the apple of Chanyeol's cheek, clearing away a tear track, and he coos. "It's not like we'll never see each other again. Just not here. In this bed."

Chanyeol doesn't say that that's what hurts the most. That this bed is where Yixing always belonged. Right here, with Chanyeol beside him.

 

Chanyeol only learns how much of his life Yixing is after he’s lost him. When he drags himself out of bed the next morning, there are no birds singing. Not a single one. He walks in his fur, four feet to the ground, and his head hangs until his nose nearly drags in the dirt. His ears are back. His tail is tucked. When he pads off to find his troupe of hunters, he goes the long way, away from the omegas. That day, he catches nothing.

He makes for his bed in the evening, scuttling out of the tree line far behind the alphas with no intent of stopping, but Yixing catches him. Yixing, who smells so different, so vile today. He wraps his arms around Chanyeol’s middle and hoists him up off of the ground, as though he were little more than a pup. _Strong_ , Chanyeol thinks forlornly, yipping and writhing in the grasp. Yixing situates him against his chest and looks down into his eyes. _And beautiful._ He wriggles out of his fur until he is a man again, sagging in Yixing’s grip and crying into the hollow of his throat.

Yixing rocks him to either side, shushing him pleasantly and sitting him down in the dirt. Like the child he is, Chanyeol thinks. Yixing drags him out of the open, back towards Chanyeol’s own home and into his own furs. Yixing drops him there. Perhaps to leave him, Chanyeol fears. He cries even louder, reaching a grasping hand for anything Yixing will give him. Yixing gives him everything, bowling him over in a hug. Chanyeol sniffles, letting himself be pressed down into the furs by Yixing’s weight.

“I need you to accept this,” Yixing tells him, smoothing the hair out of his eyes. Chanyeol looks up at him, into the troubled furrow of Yixing’s brow and the sad downturn of his lips. Chanyeol’s gut twists, a horrible stew of guilt and sadness for Yixing boiling inside of him. He closes his eyes and tries to turn his face into his furs, but Yixing shoves him onto his back and forces him to look up.

“ _I need you to accept this_ ,” Yixing repeats, his chin jutted out and his lip trembling. “Chanyeol, _please_ , you’re still my friend. You always will be.” Chanyeol wants to scoff, wants to shout, wants to sear his mark into Yixing’s skin and challenge any claim any other wolf would lay to him. Yixing doesn’t say anything of his mate, but he doesn’t have to. His bite is scabbed over, ugly and black and bruised so deeply at the edges. Chanyeol is Yixing’s friend because he can no longer be his mate. It feels like scraps at first, Yixing throwing him a bone after the feast has been taken, but when he looks up into Yixing’s eyes, he knows that this isn’t true.

Chanyeol hurts. He hurts so deeply, so profoundly, in a way that he didn’t know he could hurt. He has no family, no status, no friends but Yixing. All he ever had was his mate. And now, he does not even have that. Chanyeol heaves a heavy sigh, trembling with the weight of his sadness. Yixing runs his fingers through Chanyeol’s hair, never looking away from his eyes. Chanyeol closes them and nods. Not because he wants to, not because he truly means it, but because it’s what Yixing needs. Yixing needs Chanyeol like Chanyeol needs Yixing. Even though they’ve been torn apart, Yixing still needs him.

Chanyeol gives him what little he has left to give. “I accept it,” he says hoarsely, his voice cracking. Something inside him breaks as he speaks, but this is not for him. This is for Yixing, who still has the opportunity to be happy in his claim, even if Chanyeol is devastated and alone. Yixing reaches for his hand and squeezes it in a silent thanks. Chanyeol lets him.

 

Chanyeol cannot remember a day of his life without Yixing's smile. Even the briefest, passing grin, while Yixing is asleep or from a distance, Chanyeol has only known Yixing's happiness from the very day he was born. Like many other things, he had considered it natural, as though the morning did not come without Yixing's beauty. Oh, how much joy he had taken for granted; oh, how much laughter he had wasted. Yixing leaves his family’s hut on the outskirts of the glade and finds home in the Alpha's bed at Middlemost. Chanyeol has not seen his face in days.

Chanyeol does not know the center as well as others in their pack. A wretched bastard, and then an orphan a short time after, Chanyeol has starved and struggled for his entire life. Only once in his life has he set foot in a construction any stronger than sticks and skins, when a storm tore his home from the ground and the pack gathered as one in the high hall for the night. Yixing, whose poor family laid their heads no closer to Middlemost than Chanyeol, now lives in one of these stone and wood palaces. He must feel no wind at night, Chanyeol thinks, nor see any stars. Yixing had loved to lay beneath the bare sky on cloudless nights. He had seen his entire future in the spattered glow. Chanyeol had always looked down to where Yixing lay against his shoulder, and he had seen his future there.

Chanyeol has not seen Yixing in weeks. There are no walls segregating the center from the outskirts, or at least, none of man’s own construction. The impediment comes in the way with which Chanyeol is most familiar: his absence of bearing and upbringing, his ignorance of decorum and form. There is no place for him in the center—no way for his intentions, no road for his feet. For a wolf who wears fleas as often as he wears trousers, there is no space in the few acres where his brothers and sisters walk on two legs more often than they walk on four.

Chanyeol does not even know one building from another. Were he to wander the trampled roads trod down between the huts, he would not know one from its neighbor. Middlemost is only notable by its size, but every hall is grand compared to the mud and thin scraps of lumber that are Chanyeol's home. During these new, lonely nights, he stares off towards the center and tries to learn the roofs the way he knew the stars and the heat of Yixing at his side. He wakes cold most mornings. Yixing was always the warmer of the two of them.

 

Mornings come early; Chanyeol has learned to wake himself long before sunrise because there is nobody else to wake him. If he is not at the forest's edge when the hunters leave, he will be left behind. He is small and nonessential. He has only just begun to prove his worth with rabbits and squirrels, but he is not so established as to be immediately redeemed when he scares off larger prey or hinders the group hunt. Some days, being left behind would have been no different than being sent home. The hunters are not unkind, but they are preoccupied. Until Chanyeol can learn to run with them, he will have no place in their midst. On this day, they turn him away to toil with the children and the omegas.

The forest during the day has a different trill than the shrill warbling of the night. The cries of diurnal insects is almost softer, tired in the growing heat of midday. Chanyeol wanders between the trees, unhurried in his path back towards the pack. Nothing awaits him there, nothing but menial labor, child's work. That which pups do who are unable to yet farm or hunt. Most recently, the omegas have taken to saddling Chanyeol with sewing; his thumbs have been so sore that even his paws are tender against the ground at certain angles. His pace slackens further, his reluctance palpable.

The sounds of the forest break as Chanyeol approaches home. He can hear the chattering of omegas, and soon after come the smells of meat smoking and the damp, soft grasses thinning beneath his paws. He considers hiding away in his hut as he passes it, but no work means no food, and the thinnest parts of spring leave him hurting for meat. The omega's roost is no vast journey from his home. Chanyeol is able to see the backs of the very furthest omegas after only a short walk. He skirts towards them, dipping his head down and easing forward on his haunches.

He is welcomed with jeers and common curses, the likes no omega would utter if a proper alpha were present. Chanyeol pulls his fur back from his face and lets it hang around his shoulders to hide his nakedness. The pups are scattered amongst the omegas, most settled close to their mothers but some gathered around a sitter. Chanyeol searches for one such group, turning his eyes away from those who work needles as though he has not seen them. He has only just found an animated smattering of wolves spinning thread when he is taken hold of around his middle and thrown down to the ground. He cries out, a sharp bark of shock and pain, and he fights against whoever is holding him.

_Strong_ , he thinks, only barely managing to scramble onto his back and look into Yixing's smiling eyes, his teeth as white as the moon, the dimple in his cheek deeper than the river. Chanyeol stares for what feels like an eternity before Yixing sets upon him once more, holding him tight around his waist and pinning him to the ground. Their spectacle is lost amongst the usual ruckus of the crafters. Chanyeol takes Yixing in his arms and rolls him over, digging his face into Yixing's neck. Chanyeol grinds against him with his entire body, from where their chests open into one another for breath down to where their thighs tangle and slide as they fight for bearing. Yixing smells nothing like Chanyeol, and Chanyeol tries to rectify this before he can even remember who is scenting Yixing these days.

Still, Yixing does not stop him. He turns his face into Chanyeol's hair and noses at his temples peacefully. Chanyeol slows beneath his care, calming and offering himself to Yixing for more thorough grooming. _A good mother_ , Chanyeol thinks, unbidden, for it is no longer his pups that Yixing will be bearing. Yixing could very well be carrying heirs in the turn of another moon, when his first heat ripens him for conceiving. The image of it in Chanyeol's head sours his mood, and he rolls off of Yixing, into the dirt. Yixing follows him, nosing at his shoulder. Chanyeol looks at him, taking him in slowly. Yixing hasn't changed much since Chanyeol last saw him, but it has been so long that Chanyeol has been without Yixing that it may as well be the first time.

Adulthood has made Yixing even more beautiful. His skin glows in the open sunlight. His cheeks are flushed as though recently pinched, and his figure curves against Chanyeol in a way that promises a large family. Chanyeol finds the remnants of Yixing's claim, still stark and scaly against his porcelain skin. Chanyeol's stomach turns at the sight of it, the desires to heed the claim and to challenge it warring within him. Yixing feels his gaze and covers the mark with his hand, though there is not enough of him to hide it completely. Some jagged edges stray out from under his palm, into the light of day, where Chanyeol wonders what sort of brutal alpha would wish to scar his most prized possession so horribly on the very first night.

"Are you happy?" Chanyeol asks, his voice low and quiet beneath the commotion around them. Yixing's soft expression curls for Chanyeol in a very unfamiliar way. His lips twist into a smile, but his eyes don't follow. He lays a hand across Chanyeol's stomach, stroking him where his fur pools at his hips. He doesn't break away from Chanyeol's stare, as though he understands the challenge and meets it.

"Most of the time, yes," Yixing says. Before Chanyeol can ask about the rest of the time, Yixing says, "He's...different than I thought he would be." Chanyeol knows without being told that Yixing is referring to the Alpha. Chanyeol has an idea or two about what the Alpha is like, but he says nothing. Yixing is the one who beds with him each night, the one who serves his meals and pleasures him when the light of day has extinguished. Chanyeol says nothing. Yixing lets him have his silence for only a moment, a true smile alighting on his face. "The healer says my first heat is at least two moons away," he says. Chanyeol gives him a small smile in return.

"You are not eager to take on the duties of pack mother?" he teases.

"I do not look forward to being separated from you," Yixing says, his fingers curling in Chanyeol's pelt. Chanyeol's throat pulls tight into a knot. Yixing stares up at him as though waiting for him to say something, but Chanyeol is unable. He only comes to with a kick to the head, not too gentle, one of the sitters rousing him from his lounging in the dirt and asking him,

"Do you plan to work today?"

Yixing giggles into his hand, but all the same, he pushes away so that Chanyeol can sit up. Yixing dusts him off and helps him to his feet. He nuzzles up to Chanyeol once more, exploiting the obscurity of an omega and a youth amongst the craftworkers. "If you were at leisure, I would ask you to come to the river with me."

"The river?" Chanyeol curls a hand into Yixing's shirt to pull him away, just enough for Chanyeol to look down into his face. "Why are you going to the river?"

Yixing smiles another strange smile, one that has no place on Yixing's face. "I smell like you," he explains simply. Chanyeol would want to know what's so bad about that, but Yixing's eyes are still so fond when he continues. "My mate is very jealous. I don't want to bring you trouble."

Chanyeol would take trouble if he could have Yixing. But Yixing pulls himself free from Chanyeol's grip and intends to wash Chanyeol off of his body in the river. Chanyeol lets him go, watching Yixing's back as he weaves through the crowd before taking to the ground in his fur. Yixing is just as base and filthy as Chanyeol is. They are cut from the same cloth, birthed into the same pedigree, made for each other. Yixing is more wolf than anyone in their pack who lives in a cabin with a window. Restlessly, Chanyeol clucks his tongue and finds the circle of thread-spinners.

Yixing is not the happiest wolf in the pack, even though he is mated to the Alpha. What then, Chanyeol wonders, should stop him—a wretch—from making Yixing happier? He grinds his teeth as he holds the cotton to be spun. Chanyeol could make Yixing so happy.

"Are you happy?" Chanyeol asks him again when he next sees Yixing amongst the children and the omegas, ferrying thread from the spinners to the weavers. "Are you happy?" he asks when he comes across Yixing after a hunt, his friend taking the beast from over his shoulders. "Are you happy?" he asks from where he creeps around the darkest corner of Middlemost, hardly able to see Yixing's face in the shadows. He wishes Yixing would come out into the moonlight, but he understands why Yixing is hiding.

Yixing always says yes. _Yes, most of the time._

 

“I want you to be happy all of the time,” Chanyeol tells Yixing one night, too far from the bonfire to feel its warmth. At least its light falls upon Yixing, who has taken to hiding himself as often as he can as of late. Chanyeol is curled around him. Yixing sits proper on his haunches, but Chanyeol has sprawled out in the dirt. Yixing berated Chanyeol for it earlier in the evening, telling him that adulthood will come too soon and he will not be prepared. He never seems to approve of Chanyeol these days.

“Nobody can be happy all of the time,” Yixing tells Chanyeol, staring off towards the fire and the omegas around it. All of them are crowded together, roasting meat on spits and fighting over it until it has burnt. The children are crying and kicking at dirt and tackling each other. Yixing deigned not to sit among them; Chanyeol gladly followed him out to here, away from the smoke and the chatter and the heat. Out under the stars, just like they used to do. Yixing rubs at his arms, a habit of nerves. He runs his fingers over his bruises, probably left by his mate. The same worn by any omega with a powerful alpha. They are just as beautiful on Yixing, but Chanyeol thinks that he could never mark Yixing in that way. His skin is too beautiful to bruise, his body too beautiful to hurt. Yixing has always bruised so much more easily.

“You should be at the alphas' fire,” Yixing murmurs when Chanyeol pushes his head into Yixing’s lap. Yixing accepts him, though. He has never turned Chanyeol away.

“I would rather be with you at no fire,” Chanyeol says. Yixing merely hums, staring off at the congregation of wolves a distance away from them.

“You will be no good of an alpha if you spend all your time with me,” Yixing mumbles. Chanyeol scoffs and chooses to ignore him. Yixing has not been in his right mind since being taken by the Alpha.

 

As he watches Yixing move diligently through the center, keeping himself busy in a pack with too many wolves, Chanyeol thinks that he could never hurt Yixing the way other alphas do their omegas. All omegas wear bruises at some point in their lives; the moon could not possibly have taken Yixing from him for this. Chanyeol knows he can be a good alpha without asserting his claim through violence. He knows he could take care of Yixing, knows he could give them a good life only as long as Yixing was always smiling, always walking at his side, always laying his head in Chanyeol's furs at night.

Yixing hardly smiles now. He is often worked into exhaustion, straggling the lanes between cabins and the sprawl of land out to the furthest huts to keep from going back to Middlemost. He hasn’t said a word about it to Chanyeol—he hasn’t said much of anything to Chanyeol—but Chanyeol can tell by the way his shoulders tense whenever the moon rises high up into the sky, beckoning Yixing back to his new home.

Chanyeol doesn't understand until the scarce bruises become many, dark and plentiful in plain view. Around Yixing's small wrists, around his pale forearms, wrapped like ugly collars around his neck. The more bruises he wears, the quieter he is. Chanyeol's Yixing still shows through in his smiles, but he is drowning in the dissatisfaction with his claim. Chanyeol is only allowed to touch him when Yixing has the time to go wash himself in the river afterwards. He has always jumped at loud noises, but they have never left him in a panic before. Every omega wears bruises at least once, but Yixing is not every omega, and he is not mated to every alpha. Chanyeol suffers his plight of helplessness quietly, tucked into Yixing's side as often as he is allowed.

He is so consumed by his worry and fear that he cares not for his own wellbeing. He only eats if Yixing is there to eat with him. He bathes when Yixing asks him to. He hunts because Yixing wants him to be a good alpha. Chanyeol does not know his new body well enough to understand the way the fall sweetens him, rounding him like fruit, full of juice and seeds. His rut comes earlier than any other alpha's that season, and it comes as he is skirting around the edges of the center, stepping on Yixing's heels.

Yixing smells it first. Chanyeol's head is fuzzy, and he feels more wolf than man even though he stands on two feet. The cloud in his skull is thick and the world around him tilts and Chanyeol does not understand what is happening because rut is not supposed to feel like this. It isn't until he smells Yixing that he even knows what is happening to him.

He smells Yixing. His mouth waters, his cock hardens, and he stumbles forward blindly. Yixing is making noise, but Chanyeol is too gone to know if he's speaking or whining or shouting at him. Ruts are tamable, Chanyeol remembers from the healer's lecture. Ruts are aggressive, but not impossible to control, he thinks in one coherent thought. Ruts are most intoxicating amongst mated pairs, Chanyeol thinks as he slumps towards Yixing desperately. They are often spurred on by an omega's heat.

The alphas that catch Chanyeol and drag him away from Yixing have shoulders like boulders and strong arms that wrap around him like thick lengths of rope. They drag him through the clearing, his feet stumbling over the dirt and grass as they go. The further they get from Yixing, the clearer the air becomes. The clearer his head becomes. By the time they reach the tree line, Chanyeol is only slightly hard, and he is completely coherent. He looks up into the face of one of the alphas, a hunter he has followed into the forest many times. The alpha's face is blurred; Chanyeol blinks, and a tear streaks down his face. "Wh—what," he stutters, his entire body trembling. They lower him into the soft grass of the forest, tugging on him to prop him up against a tree. The alpha he recognizes genuflects before him and takes his face in two hands. The other steps back and turns away.

"Chanyeol," the alpha says, "this is a good day." Chanyeol whimpers and grabs onto his wrists, holding onto him desperately. "Have you spoken with the healer about rut?"

Chanyeol nods, but before the alpha can speak, he blubbers, "Why is it like this? I couldn't—everything was cloudy, I didn't—did I hurt him?"

The alpha tightens his grip on Chanyeol's face to focus him. "Everything is okay. You didn't hurt anyone." The alpha looks over Chanyeol's body, and then back into his eyes. "Can you feel it?"

Chanyeol hesitates, but then he understands. The desire, the instinctual pull to claim, to mate. It sits in him like a stone, solid and heavy. He nods his head.

"It will go away over a few days. It passes faster if you are alone. Stay away from the pack until it is gone." The alpha claps Chanyeol's face affectionately, nosing at his hair the way a father would. Chanyeol nuzzles up into him before he pulls away. He and the stranger alpha turn back towards the clearing. Chanyeol pulls his fur over his head and escapes towards the river. He can still smell Yixing on his skin, almost as though Yixing were right there beside him.

When he has finished bathing, he feels lighter. Clearer. Almost as though nothing is wrong. Still, he cannot deny the strangeness he is feeling, the want like no other he has felt in his life. He cannot stop thinking about Yixing.

 

Rut is simple when Chanyeol is alone. Though it doesn’t leave him—lingering in the back of his mind as he hunts, as he bathes, as he sleeps and wakes—he is himself. His head is clear, his senses are unclouded. He controls himself, and his instinct simmers beneath his skin, urging but not demanding. Chanyeol wanders the width of his pack's territory, following the river until it curves out towards the waterfall that terminates their claim of the forest. He sniffs around the vague border, following the tracks of unfamiliar beasts until they take him too far out into the wild and he wanders back.

The weather is mild for the season those three nights he spends amongst the trees and in the dirt. Only when the last traces of instinctual desire fade from his bones, leaving him exhausted and off-kilter, do the skies begin to darken and open upon him a torrent of rain. He is covered under thick foliage for most of his walk home, but as the trees thin closer to the clearing and then stop completely at the tree line, Chanyeol finds his fur cold and wet and clinging to his wiry body. He trembles as he trots into the clearing, scurrying past the outermost tents towards Middlemost in a desperate bid for Yixing's company. He has been starved of it these past few days, and he has never missed his friend greater than he had in this time. He scampers blindly, childishly.

He is stopped before he can even see the center by an alpha from the outskirts.

"Chanyeol," she says, grabbing him by his nape and dragging him back. Chanyeol wriggles out of his fur, trying to escape her grasp. He is tired and wet and he hasn't eaten anything that wasn't raw in days, and he only wants to see the smile that flooded his thoughts while he was alone in the wild. "Chanyeol, are you going to see the Alpha's mate?"

Chanyeol just moans pitifully, clawing at the wet ground when he loses the strength to crawl through it. The alpha crouches down beside him, lifting his face out of the mud. "Come," she says, hooking her grip beneath his arms and hoisting him up onto two feet. Chanyeol lets her lead him, bending to sniff at her hair. Through the blank, clean scent of rain, Chanyeol thinks he recognizes her. He wonders if they have hunted together before. She takes him back to his hut without asking which one is his.

"Where is Yixing," Chanyeol asks as he ducks out of the rain. He drags his muddy feet towards his furs and collapses down; the alpha has not moved from the opening to his tent.

She regards him silently for a moment. Chanyeol sits up to face her. Her mouth sets in a grim line, and she edges into his tent. "You are close friends with the Alpha's mate?" she asks. Chanyeol nods. "You should no longer worry yourself over his doings or whereabouts." Though rain continues to fall beyond his tent in a watery uproar, the entire world feels silent for a moment. Then, Chanyeol says,

"What?"

"Do not seek him, do not speak to him, do not even speak _of_ him."

Chanyeol's heart rises up into his throat. "Is—is he okay?"

The alpha's lips tighten, but her eyes are soft. "I'm sure he is," she says. Chanyeol tries to rise, but she places a hand at his shoulder and holds him down. It is harder than it would have been before his rut, his strength growing each day, but in the end, Chanyeol submits to her, and she accepts his submission. "He has not been seen since his heat began."

The air seems to chill. "His heat?"

Yixing's first heat. Chanyeol knows of it like Yixing is his own; it is the last obstacle toward's Yixing's adulthood, the last trial to finalize his claim. It isn't expected for several more weeks. Their healer is skilled in her art, she does not make such predictions lightly. And while there are those rare instances where a heat comes early, or late, or not at all, there is always a cause. Chanyeol's throat is tight, and his mind is blank. "When did his heat begin? It’s too early, it shouldn’t’ve—”

The alpha shuffles close to Chanyeol, holding his face in her hands and tugging him close, as though he were her child. "Listen to me carefully, Chanyeol, and do not speak or move until I have finished." Chanyeol nods as much as he is able in her iron grip. "His heat began several days ago. His heat..." Chanyeol knows what she is going to say before she says it. "His heat began right after your rut. It began...right after he scented your rut."

She won't say it, but Yixing's heat was provoked by Chanyeol's rut. Chanyeol induced Yixing's heat. Yixing was made for Chanyeol. Chanyeol's eyes begin to water and he squirms, desperate to see Yixing now that he knows. The alpha tightens her grip on his face until it is almost painful; Chanyeol whimpers and stills.

"The two of you are to remain separated for as long as you are a part of this pack." The breath leaves Chanyeol in a blow; one moment he is breathing, the next he cannot. _What?_ , is the first thing he thinks, and then he thinks, _no, no, no, no, that can't be the last time I saw him._ The last time Yixing saw him, Chanyeol tried—Chanyeol tried to take him. Chanyeol sought to violate a claimed omega, and. And somehow, the Alpha found out.

"There are many eyes in this pack, Chanyeol. If they did not know you before, they will now. You have to stay away from him. Not only for your sake." Chanyeol thinks of the bruises on Yixing's body, their blatancy, their unapologetic flagrance. He thinks of the Alpha, who rose to power before a time in Chanyeol's memory by tearing the head off of the old king and slaughtering the heir amidst the blood of his father. What is a mere mate to him, Chanyeol wonders, feeling the color drain from his face and hands. Has nobody seen even a glimpse of Yixing since his heat began?

Chanyeol doesn't realize he's talking until the alpha inside his hut presses her thumbs to his lips. He stills beneath her grip, unsure of whether he had even managed one coherent word, but if he did not then she reads his thoughts with no difficulty: "He is alive. You can smell him, if you are close enough to Middlemost. Whatever is happening, he is alive." Chanyeol sinks in her grip. She lets him go. He drops his head into his hands, and then rakes them through his hair. He pulls, and then releases, reaching up once more to press the heels of his hands into his eyes. He is breaking without Yixing. He is breaking.

"Remember what I've told you, Chanyeol."

"Stay—stay away from him," he manages, his chest heaving, his eyes burning, his heart breaking. The alpha hesitates, but in the end, she leaves him like that. He lets out a choked, desperate sound. He lets out a sob.

He has lost Yixing, who needs him more than ever.  


 

Chanyeol does not leave his tent for two days. For two days, he does not hunt, and so for two days, he does not eat. The rain lets up in spans of hours before the spring deluge continues. The world mourns his loss along with him. The earth smells wet and muddy when somebody claws at the closed door of his hut. Chanyeol burrows into his pelts, hoping that the rain outside hides his breathing, but his visitor continues to beg for entrance.

"Chanyeol, please open," Yixing says from the other side. Chanyeol opens his eyes, but he knows that he is dreaming. He takes a deep breath, the kind that comes with waking, and he lifts his head to listen for movement. The rain drowns the world around him, and he hears nothing. He lays his head back down and closes his eyes once more. The whole of his hut trembles behind the desperation of whoever is pushing at his door, and again Chanyeol hears Yixing's voice, "Please, Chanyeol, I know you're there."

Chanyeol scrambles to open so quickly that he tumbles in his haste, but he feels no pain when he opens his door and finds Yixing crouched on the other side, drenched from the rain. This close, Chanyeol can smell him. He longs to lean into Yixing's throat and inhale until he has quenched his craving for Yixing, but the warning still hangs heavily over his head. Two days later, it is all he can hear as he falls asleep, as he stares at the walls of his home, as he lays alone in the quiet and dark. For a very long moment, neither of them even move. When Chanyeol has convinced himself that this _is_ a dream, that he _is_ asleep, Yixing reaches forward and touches his hand. Chanyeol gasps, his entire body alight.

"Yixing..."

There is nothing about Yixing that looks okay. His split lip, his blackened eye, the open trail of teethmarks across the center of his throat—Yixing looks as broken as Chanyeol feels. Though Yixing touches him, Chanyeol finds that he cannot move. Yixing has to curl his hand around Chanyeol's and pull just to get him to stand, leading him out of the tent. Yixing's head swings madly, his eyes darting in every direction, but the rain has whited out everything around them. Yixing looks back to Chanyeol and pulls his fur up over his head.

His ears are alert atop his skull, still upright and swiveling despite the downpour. Chanyeol follows Yixing onto all fours, the white of his fur a bold juxtaposition to the black of Yixing's. Chanyeol, the moon, and Yixing, the night sky. They tear through the mud until they reach the forest, and then Yixing leads them in a stumbling, errant path that Chanyeol only belatedly realizes ends at the river. The end of their river. The falls.

"Chanyeol—"

Yixing does not have the chance to say anything further. Chanyeol embraces him so aggressively that they both stumble and splash into the shallows of the water. Its flooded edges creep up to the soggy ground where they've sprawled, Chanyeol burying his nose against Yixing's jaw to smell him. Beneath the water and the mud and the humidity and the smell of rain and earth, there is Yixing. Chanyeol's hands tighten around him, his entire body relaxing. Yixing is here.

"How did this happen," Chanyeol asks hoarsely, having to raise his voice over the thundering of rain over the canopy. "What did you do?"

Yixing turns his head to bury his face in Chanyeol's hair. He tangles his legs amongst Chanyeol's and refrains from answering. Any other time, Chanyeol would not accept this. Any other time, he would push until Yixing explained. Any other time, he would do more than hold Yixing close and rock their bodies from side to side in the mud and shallow water. But that's all Chanyeol can do. His tears are hot on his cold face. Yixing is alive, but he is hurt. Yixing is alive, but at what cost, and for how long?

"I've missed you," Yixing finally says, breaking an incredibly long silence. Chanyeol just nuzzles him, incapable of anything more. Yixing accepts him until Chanyeol comes closer, wrapping his arm around Yixing's waist and drawing a horrible, pained sound from him. Chanyeol scrambles back, away, and Yixing grasps his injury. Beneath his fur, beneath the thin, soaked shirt below that, Chanyeol can just see the faint shading of more bruises. When Chanyeol reaches forward, Yixing flinches. He doesn't pull away, but he flinches, and Chanyeol could tear out the throat of the wolf who did this if he only had the opportunity.

"Yixing," Chanyeol finally says again. "What happened?"

Immediately, Chanyeol can tell that things are different between them. Yixing bows his head, penitent and submissive. If he still had his fur around him, Chanyeol knows that he would see Yixing’s tail between his legs. He would see Yixing’s ears flat against his skull. There is a command in Chanyeol’s voice, and Yixing is bending to obey it. Chanyeol demands of Yixing; Yixing submits to him.

“You,” Yixing whispers. Chanyeol has to strain to hear him. “I smelled you, and I only—I only wanted you.”

Chanyeol still doesn’t understand. “Yixing, please, I don’t—”

“I called for you, even after they dragged you away.” Yixing swallows thickly, his heart pounding in his chest strong enough for Chanyeol to feel it. Beating as though it beats towards him. “Even after he came to collect me.”

To that, Chanyeol says nothing. He can almost see it, through the hazy memory of that moment, through the days after which he spent alone, he can almost see Yixing being dragged away by the Alpha. Locked in his cabin and punished through his heat. Punished when it ended. Treating Yixing like some base mutt, stripped from the dirt and the weeds. Like one of those poor omegas who die at the hands of their alphas, scared and alone and broken. So unbearably broken. Chanyeol thinks he will die before he sees Yixing as one of those poor omegas.

“Yixing,” he says. Yixing turns his head towards Chanyeol, only slightly more man than wolf. “I can’t accept this anymore. I can’t accept your claim.”

Yixing heaves a great breath. He cradles Chanyeol as though he were still a child and not a man, holding him close despite his pain. “It doesn’t matter,” Yixing tells him. “He already has me.”

Chanyeol’s heart sinks, but Yixing is right.

 

They go back separately. Yixing bathes himself and trots back on all fours from where they are. Chanyeol skirts around the river, following it until he has left their territory and reentered on another side. He drags himself back to the pack from there. When he wanders through the forest, he is alone. When he is back amongst the cabins and huts, he is alone. The clearing is empty, everyone shut away in their homes or in the halls at the center. Chanyeol alone wanders back out to where he keeps his bed. His stomach howls for food. Tomorrow, he thinks, he will hunt. For himself, his misery now passing into resignation, and for Yixing, who still needs him. Even now, Yixing still needs him.

_Especially_ now, Yixing still needs him.

 

The hunting troupe accepts him as though he had never vanished. He no longer has a place amongst the omegas and the children, doing needlework and spinning thread. He is an adult now, and he has an assured place in each kill, nipping at the heels of whatever beast is fit to fill their bellies so that he may steer it into another hunter’s jaws. His home is no closer to the center than it was when he was only a bastard child, and he is no closer to finding a mate. He would not be, were he pursuing one.

Instead, Chanyeol spends his leisure time at the river, sniffing along for any trace of Yixing that may not have been washed away by the water. Most days, he wanders to the very edge of his pack's territory before returning, defeated, to his tent. He never stays away for long. He lives for those rainy afternoons, those cloudy nights, those arid mornings when the clearing is empty and Yixing is waiting for him in the water. Or if not waiting for him, then following right on his heels. Yixing swears that the Alpha has no idea, and Chanyeol believes him.

Yixing's face is clear these days. As frost begins to creep its fingers through the forest floor and up the sides of the trees, Yixing dresses warmer and hides whatever hurt his Alpha gives him. Chanyeol asks to see, but Yixing always refuses him. Instead, Chanyeol watches Yixing's face, and he is pleased by what he sees. If the Alpha ever suspected Yixing of sneaking behind him for anyone, let alone Chanyeol, his face would show it. His throat would show it. Every step he took would show it.

If the Alpha knew that it was Chanyeol stealing his mate’s attention, it wouldn't matter. Yixing would be dead. Chanyeol does not doubt this. If he truly cared for Yixing’s life, he would not come. He would not sit, waiting like a lost pup. He would never come back.

But Chanyeol is weak, and Chanyeol would rather face the Alpha’s wrath honestly than ever pretend that he could live a life without Yixing in it.

And so Chanyeol meets Yixing by the river as snow begins to fall. He brings the last of the chicory and the honeysuckle that he finds along his way, and with the sweet taste of flowers on his tongue, Yixing admits that he has yet to conceive. Chanyeol struggles to contain his elation, but Yixing does not chide him for failing. The river where they meet will not freeze for several moons more, but it has already become frigid and unforgiving. When Yixing bathes himself of Chanyeol’s scent before leaving, he leaves shivering. Chanyeol often sends him off knowing that he would do better to cease embracing Yixing as freely as he had in youth, but each time he sees Yixing feels like both the first and last, and he is unable to control himself as he should.

Yixing never asks him to stop, anyways. Chanyeol remembers a time when his friend was the more sensible of the two of them. Back then, he dreamed of waking something in Yixing a bit more fantastic, a bit more romantic. He watches Yixing go, stifling the urge to lick him or rub up against him as he does because it will soon be his turn to ice in the cold river. Perhaps one of them should have remained sensible.

 

By the coming of the full snow moon, Chanyeol is eager for the first blooms of spring. He is thin and pale, and he sleeps away as much of the day as he can afford. There is no game worth hunting, but he stays alive and well through scavenging.

Winter is hard, but winter alone is harder.

Chanyeol has not seen Yixing in days. He may not see him for several days more. As snow fell heavier and the river began to freeze across the very top of the water, Yixing’s visits grew more and more infrequent. The Alpha does not go out as often, Yixing had told him. Footprints are easier to follow without hunters masking his trail through the forest. It’s harder to travel through the cold weather as often as he had before the turn of the season.

Still, Chanyeol takes to the river in his free moments. Still, he waits for Yixing, hidden in the snow like no other wolf in his pack. In his white fur, he tracks the river until he is cold and tired and hungry before giving up. So many days end in this way that Chanyeol has already resigned himself to this being one of them. He has been to the falls and back with no sign of Yixing or his paw prints. His tail is hanging between his hind legs when he hears the pattering of footfalls over snow. Chanyeol’s ears swivel towards the sound. His fur ridges down to his tail. He crouches low.

Yixing is easy to spot in the winter. As black as Chanyeol is white, solid and unbroken, he is a shadow against the snow. He sniffs along Chanyeol’s old tracks, yet unmasked by snowfall or wind. Chanyeol’s tail wags, and he waits for Yixing to come close enough before bounding forward. Yixing swings his head up, but too late. Chanyeol takes them down into the snow, embracing Yixing as a man. When Yixing slides his fingers into Chanyeol’s furs, his cold nose against Chanyeol’s chest, Chanyeol remembers that there was a time when they could do this they pleased, without fear of being seen or scented.

Chanyeol rolls them so that he is beneath Yixing, cradling him from the cold below. Yixing crawls up Chanyeol’s body until he can hold Chanyeol’s face in his hands, and as they meet one another’s eyes, he smiles. Chanyeol is breathless. Chanyeol is devastated. He rests his hands on Yixing’s thighs and squeezes, unable to believe that the sun is still in the sky when it could very well be sitting on his lap.

“It’s been too long,” Yixing says, tucking himself against Chanyeol’s chest once more. Chanyeol’s hands slide up Yixing’s thighs to hold him around his middle. Would he be wasting his breath to agree? There is nothing he feels so strongly, so obviously. Chanyeol can hardly manage to breathe, but when Yixing looks up to him with his eyes creased into crescents, he thinks he could sing Yixing’s praises.

“Winter is half a season and twice as long without you beside me,” he declares grandly. Yixing covers his smile with one small hand, but Chanyeol pushes it away. “It’s true,” he says.

“Winter is a very long season,” Yixing agrees. His eyes are shadowed with heavy bags, and there are faint, yellowish bruises around his throat. Winter could not be longer for anyone than it is for Yixing. Chanyeol cups his face and caresses the apple of his cheeks. They are full and flushed. He is being fed, at least. Yixing settles into his touch in a way that makes Chanyeol wonder how often he is handled gently, caressed with love.

Yixing refuses to tell Chanyeol of the extent of his unhappiness. Since that day when he ran into Chanyeol’s arms, beaten and broken from the onset of his first heat, he has not burdened Chanyeol with the details of his abuse. In this way, Chanyeol feels just as burdened. However much it hurts, he longs to know what sufferings Yixing has endured. He only knows that Yixing has yet to carry a litter, and that his first heat has been unfruitful. The Alpha will have no heir come springtime.

Yixing does not say it aloud, but Chanyeol knows that if Yixing could have his way, the Alpha would never sire pups with him. There is no use in these fantasies—Chanyeol shudders to think of what would happen should the Alpha find Yixing to be barren—but they seem to bring Yixing comfort. He holds his flat stomach, and he places Chanyeol’s hands beneath his own and holds them there. Chanyeol swallows heavily. He loathes and adores being this close.

“I always thought you would be wonderful with pups,” Chanyeol whispers, his words frozen like the breath between his lips. Yixing is quiet for a long while.

“I think I would be, if they were yours,” he says.

Chanyeol closes his eyes and bites his tongue. His eyes water hotly, but he is too old to be crying, especially in front of an omega as beautiful as Yixing. Yixing releases his hand to cup his face, and when he opens his eyes, Yixing is so close that Chanyeol can feel the heat of his breath.

“Yixing,” he chokes. “I want them to be.” Yixing shushes him placidly, stoking his hair and pulling him close. “No, Yixing,” Chanyeol presses, “you should have been mine, you were always mine.”

“I know,” Yixing tells him, his lips brushing the corner of Chanyeol’s mouth as he speaks. Chanyeol falls silent, his hearth thundering in his chest. Steam rises off of his body. The world around him is white and clean, as though he were dreaming it. He could be. “I know,” Yixing tells him again, his lips pressed fully against Chanyeol’s. Chanyeol does not have the presence of mind to return his embrace before Yixing is a wolf once more, his ears swiveling on his head. He darts off into the forrest, leaving Chanyeol alone in the snow at the frozen banks of the river. He did not know that alone could feel more lonely than it did, but it does.

 

Yixing does not return to the river again until the first cawing of the crows. The heralds ring out the coming end of the season, and Chanyeol visits the water every day in hopes that he will see his love. Each day grows longer than the last; each day, the heavy snow is thinner. Chanyeol does not know what Yixing heard the day that Chanyeol last saw him, but he knows that he has not seen Yixing since. He has not heard Yixing’s name spoken by the wolves around his home, but there would be no reason for them to speak it if nothing had changed.

He tells himself that if Yixing had suffered for his meetings with Chanyeol, then Chanyeol would know of it by now.

That does not stop him from waiting at the river, day in and day out, like some scrawny, desperate hound for its master. Until the deer fatten and the rabbits leave their holes, this is not such an inaccurate comparison. Winter is not yet passed, and those who were once hunters continue to forage instead. Chanyeol, with no family to feed and no status to stand on, fights for the thinnest of grasses and the sourest of berries. He is starving for more than food. He is starving for sunlight, he is starving for warmth. He is starving for the companionship of his fellow hunters.

As always, he continues to starve for Yixing.

 

Each moment without Yixing is just another moment that Yixing grows more beautiful. Each time Chanyeol sees him, it is as though for the first, and he is always taken by the grace and charm that no wolf should possess, should the moon decide it is a sin to be outshone.

And yet on this day, when the ground has finally thawed and is moist beneath Chanyeol’s paws, he knows that Yixing is glowing in a way that he was not several moons ago when Chanyeol last saw him. Spring is coming, and Chanyeol can see it in Yixing’s cheeks, his vibrant smile, his wide hips. He is waiting in the mud when Chanyeol approaches, fur cast aside so that his human skin may bathe in the muck and mire. Chanyeol approaches tentatively, but Yixing does not shy like he feared.

“Are you scared of me?” he teases. Chanyeol drops his fur beside Yixing’s and slides in the mud alongside him.

“Scared that you’ll run off again,” he says. Yixing reaches out to smear mud across his face in retaliation. Chanyeol accepts it gracefully.

“I’m sorry,” Yixing says. “I—scared myself.”

“But you’re back,” Chanyeol says. He crawls closer to Yixing, who lays still, perhaps waiting. Chanyeol reaches out to touch him, and Yixing allows himself to be touched. Chanyeol settles against him, and Yixing accepts him as though he has been waiting.

“Chanyeol,” he says, tucking his head beneath Chanyeol’s jaw. Chanyeol wraps around him so fiercely that he can feel Yixing struggle to breathe. Chanyeol feels breathless, himself. He holds his love in his arms, and they have never been closer or farther from one another. Chanyeol can smell spring on Yixing, in his hair, on his breath, in the hollows of his neck. Even through the wet, earthy smell of the mud, Chanyeol can smell Yixing. He breathes him in deeply.

“Chanyeol, I thought I was yours,” Yixing says. Chanyeol feels as though something has lodged itself in his throat. He tries to speak, but his words are solid, and they lodge themselves so firmly that he cannot knock them loose. They will not come. He is silent. Yixing looks up towards him. “Why did you not take me? Why have you waited? You told me I was yours.”

Yixing’s questions burn, because Yixing _is_ Chanyeol’s, Chanyeol knows this more than he knows himself. He knows that Yixing is his, so why does Yixing not sleep in his bed? Why is Yixing not carrying his litter? They both know why, and it is cruel of Yixing to insist on reminding them. How cruel he is to bring even the thought of his mate to this sacred space of theirs, even his memory enough to taint the ground they bathe in. Chanyeol tries to pull away, emotion smoking in him as it would in a child. Chanyeol is a man, but Yixing makes him less than that.

“Don’t go,” Yixing begs him, holding tight to Chanyeol when he tries to slip away, out of Yixing’s arms. Yixing tightens around him. “I’m sorry, please, I’m only asking you to take me.”

He’s gone mad, Chanyeol can tell. The winter has been long, too long. It has turned Yixing’s head. He has lost himself in those long nights. Chanyeol should not heed him, for he has lost the power of reason. But what is reason to a child? Chanyeol pulls Yixing close and kisses him, his hands curled into fists should he become overwhelmed with the desire to mark Yixing. Yixing holds Chanyeol’s head in his hands and submits to him. Not because Chanyeol has forced him, but because he desires to submit to Chanyeol.

Because Yixing is Chanyeol’s mate. He always has been. No matter who seeks to separate them, he always will be. The moon has given him to Chanyeol. No mortal power will long scare them away from one another.

 

Chanyeol’s first hunt of spring produces a buck. They leave the does to repopulate, but the buck is fair game. He goes with two other alphas whose faces are pale and unshaven, the distinction between their fur and their human flesh growing hazier with each day. There is a tree in the forest where a doe has recently urinated. They wait around it, hidden in the mud and grasses, crouched so low that Chanyeol cannot even see his companions. When he spots the deer, he is to lunge first, to steer the deer towards the senior hunters.

They drag it, kicking and rearing, into the dirt. One aims for the throat and misses, clamping its jaws around the deer’s face. The other misses and takes hold of the back of its neck. The beast continues to writhe. Chanyeol dives for its throat and tears. He has never tasted blood so fresh, flooding his mouth, waking his hunger for spring.

Chanyeol’s first hunt of spring is a buck with four points, whose antlers he will keep with him in his home as a relic of his first kill. He returns to the pack with blood dripping down his chin, down his chest, matted in his fur, sticky on his skin, and nobody is there to lick him clean when he arrives.

 

“You brought in the first buck of the season,” Yixing says in a rush when he catches Chanyeol at the river. It is still frigid, the maturing spring not yet strong enough to pierce the canopy that shades it. Chanyeol startles when Yixing catches him, for he had not been awaiting him. He had only sought to clean himself, unwilling to be bathed by those who did not know his name before this day. He stinks of his kill; Yixing must have followed the scent.

“Yixing, go back, you shouldn’t—”

The Alpha will be about. He will be overseeing his pack. He will be with the omegas who skin the beast, and he will be with the omegas who strip it and roast it. He will be with the omegas who tan the hide, and he will know that it is being prepared for a wolf that he loathes. He will know that this is Chanyeol’s kill. He will know, and he will be vigilant. Yixing should not be here.

But Yixing licks a stripe up Chanyeol’s face, up the length of his cheek. He licks another much closer to Chanyeol’s mouth. He sucks at his dirty throat, and bows his head to taste Chanyeol’s bloody chest. Chanyeol stares down at him in awe. The smell of blood is so strong in the air that Chanyeol can hardly smell anything else, but when Yixing looks up at Chanyeol through his eyelashes, Chanyeol can only smell him.

Spring is strong on Yixing. He is ripening, his body smelling strongly of his sex. When Chanyeol drags his hands down between Yixing’s legs, he finds him damp. Yixing’s eyes flutter shut, but Chanyeol’s open wide. He has the scent of Yixing’s sex on his fingers—something that is not his to have. Something he has never had before. Not from Yixing or any other wolf. Yixing’s expression is soft, pleased, reaching for Chanyeol’s hand to put it back where it was.

Spring is coming, and Yixing is ripe.

Chanyeol, the man, knows that he cannot.

Chanyeol, the wolf, does. He drags Yixing down onto his back, and Yixing goes easily. Yixing is wearing clothes; Chanyeol is not. Chanyeol only has the presence of mind to not tear them, stripping them cleanly so that Yixing will be able to redress. He will smell of blood, but mostly, he will smell of himself. Chanyeol takes Yixing not in broad daylight, but in the shade. They are so close to the clearing, where anybody could find them. Chanyeol’s knot grows thick inside of Yixing, and the passion of rut overtakes him. The sun is only just centering in the sky. Anybody could come down to the river.

But nobody does.

Clouds pass over the sun, and Chanyeol pulls out of Yixing limply. His seed drips down Yixing’s perineum and into the crease of his backside. It drips off of Chanyeol onto the mud. The blood of his kill has dried on him and left him itchy; it is almost indistinguishable from the deep, wet earth spread across Yixing’s shoulders, caked in his hair, smeared in messy handprints over every expanse of Chanyeol’s torso. Yixing’s lips are swollen and his eyes are closed. He is sated. Chanyeol is unsatisfied.

He is spent, but he could harden again at the thought of having this each morning, each evening. Were Yixing in his bed, they would have this every day, and Chanyeol would not mark him at all save for the marks Yixing asked of him. There is dirt beneath his nails from where he curled his hands in the earth so that he did not curl them in Yixing. He has teethmarks in his bottom lip for the very same reason.

“You’ve been gone too long,” Chanyeol says, breaking the silence of the afterglow. Yixing slants his gaze down to see him. “Your mate will be looking for you.”

“I don’t want him to find me,” Yixing says, closing his eyes and stretching out on the ground. He looks comfortable here, the way any other would look sprawled on a bed of silks and furs. Yixing has always been more wolf than man, though he walks amongst men most days. Chanyeol knows that Yixing belongs with him under the stars, in the dirt, in the river.

But what he says is, “You have to go back.”

Yixing’s eyes open to hold him immobile. Chanyeol stills under this hardened gaze. “ _You_ go back,” Yixing says, his tone strong for an omega. He is careless here; any lesser alpha would strike him down. Chanyeol, however, feels that he, himself, has been struck. “I will not go back until I’m ready.” Yixing sits up carefully, more of their mess smearing across his thighs and on his belly. More softly than before, perhaps only inspired by Chanyeol’s confusion, he says, “I don’t want to wash you away just yet.” He reaches for Chanyeol, but Chanyeol backs out of his reach. Yixing’s hard stare breaks, hurt creasing his face.

“He’ll know, Yixing, he’ll—he’ll smell it, he’ll hurt you,” Chanyeol says. _He’ll kill you._

Yixing sets his mouth in a straight line. “Go, then,” he says. His eyes are forgiving. Chanyeol leaves while he is allowed, skirting along the river. He trudges into its slow, lazy stream, bathing until he is clean, and only then does he return to the pack. They await him. His kill sits high, speared on a spit over a large fire. It will last long into the night, celebrating the return of the hunting season. The Alpha watches him from a distance. Chanyeol does not see Yixing for the rest of the day.

 

Nor is Yixing seen in the days following. The first hours of spring have brought Yixing’s heat. He is shuttered away from the sun and sky and wet breezes and new blossoms. When Chanyeol next sees him, he is bathing himself with the omegas and the children. His eyes are on the ground, and his hands are on his stomach. His exposed flesh is marked with handprint bruises and scratches and teeth marks, but his face is clean and bright. Chanyeol skirts around the area, but he does not come close enough to be spotted; they are amongst the pack. Their friendship is still forbidden.

Chanyeol lingers, never taking his gaze away from Yixing. Several times, Yixing raises his head, eyes searching through the crowd of wolves around him, as though he has caught Chanyeol’s scent. His eyes never find Chanyeol, but he still searches. Chanyeol’s tail wags as he trots back to the outskirts, where he happily lays his head.

 

The smell of flowers and sex is thick in the clearing. The first omegas of springtime are showing with new litters, their stomachs round and their cheeks flushed. Their wolves preen and their eyes shine. Chanyeol, who has no omega of his own, yearns for a family the same way he always has. He skirts around the clearing, in-between huts and cabins and neighbors. The weather warms, and the pack grows more sociable. Chanyeol, the bastard, lives at the fringe of the excitement.

He spends long mornings hunting in the forest. He whiles away longer afternoons napping in the grass, shaded by leaves, lulled in and out of waking by the burbling river. He is an adult, but he is still a child in many ways. The world is reborn around him; Chanyeol feels reborn with it. He is pink, he is raw, he is new.

Yixing grows more lovely every day. He blossoms more sweetly than every bloom in the forest, in the clearing, along the river. He shines more radiantly than any star. He is as round and as bright as the moon herself. So round, so soft, so bright. Chanyeol is gathering flowers for Yixing to fashion into a crown when Yixing trots proudly through the trees, his ears up and his tail wagging.Chanyeol smiles from the other side of the waterfall and holds up the flowers in his arms. Yixing’s tail wags faster. He drops his fur on the banks and wades into the river.

“Chanyeol, come here,” he calls out sweetly. It’s a soft beckoning, like a mother for its child. Chanyeol sets his flowers down and clambers into the water. He slips and slides along the rocks at the bottom, swimming towards where Yixing is waiting for him. Yixing holds him strangely, in a way that he has not before. He takes Chanyeol and cradles his head to his breast. Chanyeol accepts the embrace, but he also peers up at Yixing with curiosity in his eyes. “I have something to share with you,” Yixing tells him.

Chanyeol waits, but Yixing does not speak. He smiles brightly, and then bites his lip, but he does not say anything. Chanyeol pushes at him, whining in an eager plea, but Yixing responds to his play in kind and dips him under the water. Chanyeol goes, sputtering, but he drags Yixing down with him. They splash and struggle, altogether too loud, and only when they’ve washed up on shore does Yixing quiet Chanyeol and pull him close once more.

“I’m pregnant,” he says. Chanyeol stills, staring up at Yixing with wide, shocked eyes.

“You think so?” he asks.

Yixing shakes his head. “The healer has told me. I _know_ so.”

For a moment, the birds stop singing. Chanyeol thinks that perhaps his shock has rendered him deaf, but it is not so. A breeze ruffles through the foliage above, and the leaves rustle their conspiring whispers on its tail. The birds have simply…stopped singing. Chanyeol’s pounding heart is the loudest sound in the forest in that moment. A trill breaks out from a nearby tree, and all at once, the forest fills with noise. Insects Chanyeol had not noticed before, the sound of the water behind him, the scampering of forest creatures through the trees.

For a moment, there had only been Chanyeol, Yixing, and the air moving around them. _Pregnant._ Yixing is radiant, and he is round. Chanyeol touches his stomach with reverence. Yixing lays his hand overtop of Chanyeol’s. _Pregnant_ , but it is too early. And yet—there is no mistake or confusion.

“The father—” Chanyeol manages no more, merely staring up at Yixing. There is no telling, not even the healer could tell them, but Chanyeol knows that when the pups come out, they will be pale and snowy. Yixing is mated to a brown wolf, and the pups will look like Chanyeol.

“I am certain of their blood, Chanyeol. I can _feel_ it,” Yixing says. He is beaming. Chanyeol is breaking, Chanyeol is terrified. “They’re yours.”

 

Everything is wrong. It is everything he wanted and nothing like how he wanted it. Chanyeol will have pups. Yixing is carrying his litter. Chanyeol could almost be a father, he’s so close to having everything he ever wanted, but it’s all wrong. As soon as Yixing gives birth to those pups, as soon as the Alpha realizes what has happened, he’ll kill Yixing. If Yixing keeps this litter, he won’t live to see the next full pink moon.

Chanyeol knows very little about flowers. He knows which he can eat, and which will make him sick, and little else. It is not in his line to understand the teas that are made for him, or the spices that season his meat. Yixing would know more about this, if Chanyeol were brave enough to bring him. Instead, Chanyeol goes in search on his own for those round yellow flowers that his father had taught him about, worried that his second child would present as an omega. Chanyeol has not thought about these flowers in years; he has had no need.

But now, with Yixing’s safety in jeopardy, he searches with a critical eye. Tansy grows in this forest, but nowhere close enough for a stray child or an ignorant omega to stumble upon it. Chanyeol travels far in the wide expanse of the pack’s territory; he skips hunting and foregoes eating for this trip. When he comes home, he keeps the flowers hidden beneath his shirt. He brings a handful of them home, whole, ignorant of what parts are needed to make a useful tea. He keeps this a secret from Yixing for days, because how does he ask his love to abort their pups, to kill the one thing they have?

But he cannot wait long. The longer Yixing remains pregnant, the less efficiently the tea will work, and before long, it will do nothing more than deform the pups until they come into the world miserable and wretched. He brings the flowers with him the next time he finds himself at the river, and he paces until he thinks Yixing is not coming. Yixing, who has been wary of him since he shared the news, comes before he can give up and leave.

“Yixing,” Chanyeol says. His voice is lower than his tail. Yixing comes to him smiling, trotting, wagging. He slows as he approaches Chanyeol, shedding his fur until he is a man. He is not frowning, but his face is blank, and there is confusion in his eyes. Chanyeol’s heart twists with hurt. This should have been a happy time for them. Instead, Chanyeol pushes the flowers towards Yixing. He opens his mouth to speak, but he doesn’t know how to even form the words. He closes his mouth and looks up to Yixing, tears in his eyes.

“Chanyeol,” Yixing begins, reaching tentatively for the flowers. “What are these?”

Chanyeol pulls his fur over his head to hide. He slides close to Yixing, low on his haunches. His ears are pinned back, his tail is between his legs. He crawls into Yixing’s lap, nosing at his stomach. Yixing pulls him close, running his fingers through Chanyeol’s fur. He’s nervous. Chanyeol whines.

“Chanyeol, please talk to me,” Yixing begs.

Chanyeol wriggles out of his fur and takes Yixing into the dirt. He holds him there. He wraps his arms around Yixing and holds him still, nosing at Yixing's throat and pressing their chests together. "Please listen to me," he says.

"You haven't spoken—"

"No, Yixing, stop. Listen," Chanyeol interjects. He pauses, but when he speaks, the words tumble forward before he can stop them. "You can't keep the pups."

There is a quiet between them, solid and writhing. Yixing is still for only a moment before he is squirming out from beneath Chanyeol. Chanyeol holds onto him, his alpha strength overwhelming in this awful moment. Yixing thrashes like a dying thing, silent except for the whines and grunts of his struggle. It takes everything Chanyeol has in him to hold on, and not because Yixing is strong enough to throw him off.

"Chanyeol, _let go of me_ ," he cries, scratching and shoving at Chanyeol’s shoulders. Chanyeol clings to him tighter, trying to speak levelly, trying to be calm for his omega, trying to hold himself together when he wants to fall apart just like Yixing is.

“He’s going to know, Yixing, he’s going to find out and he’s going to kill you,” Chanyeol pleads. “The flowers will help. They’ll clear your womb. You can start again in the fall—”

Yixing swipes at Chanyeol, and he is a hair’s breadth from leaving a deep gash in Chanyeol’s cheek. Chanyeol falls away from him, holding his hands up in defense. Yixing does not pounce. He lays in the dirt, his chest heaving, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open. He stares at Chanyeol as though he has been struck, himself. Chanyeol crawls forward, and Yixing crawls back.

“Yixing, please,” Chanyeol begs. His voice is small. He is small, too. “I can’t lose you. Not over this.”

“ _No._ ” Yixing’s voice is hard. There is no negotiation on this matter, the choice has been made before Chanyeol could even mourn. He whimpers, reaching for the flowers, but Yixing snatches them up instead, standing only enough to hurl them into the river. Chanyeol cries out and lunges for them, but the water carries them off. Chanyeol is crying, and he has been for some time, though he cannot pinpoint the exact moment he began.

“I can’t lose you,” he cries into the dirt. He’ll have been the one who finally took Yixing’s life. His pups will be burned and his love will be torn apart by the very teeth that claimed him. Yixing takes Chanyeol’s face delicately in his hands and lifts him up off of his stomach. He wipes Chanyeol’s tears with his thumbs and kisses his face.

“No,” he says again. “You don’t understand.”

“No,” Chanyeol says, “ _you_ don’t understand.”

“Chanyeol,” Yixing snaps. “He will not kill me if I kill him first.”

Chanyeol, in his shock, sobs harder. He stares upon Yixing in disbelief, surely mistaking what he’s said, but the words ring clearer in his head than any that have ever been spoken. It is not whether he has heard, but whether he understands; and he does not.

Yixing has never killed a rabbit. Yixing has not killed a squirrel. Yixing has not even killed a mouse. He has never felt bones snapping between his teeth, never tasted warm blood on his tongue; among omegas, Yixing is a pillar of virtue; Yixing has not taken life from a single creature in his existence. And still, he speaks as though he were a veteran warrior. He has handled crops and pups and elderly and consumptives, but he has never truly handled life.

“Yixing,” Chanyeol speaks slowly, despite his wretched hiccups, “you don’t understand what you’re saying.”

But Yixing’s eyes are wise, so deep with understanding that Chanyeol could almost be fooled if he did not know better. Yixing leans forward, their noses catching on one another, their lips brushing but never closing in a kiss. Yixing breathes Chanyeol deeply, licking at the tears still falling over his face. “I understand more than you think I do,” he says.

Bitterly, Chanyeol asks him, “What do you know about death? What do you know about _killing_?”

“I know that I’m going to kill the wolf who claimed me.” Yixing’s voice is a sharp shout, so violent and sudden that Chanyeol flinches. His sobs quiet, only his disturbed breathing breaking the quiet between them. There is a disconnect that Chanyeol had not seen before. Whether it is because Yixing had not shown it to him or because Chanyeol refused to see it, he is unsure. All he knows is that this is not the child with whom he spent so many moons. This is not the mate that was stolen from him. This is the hurt and the betrayal of an alpha treating his omega as expendable, as a canvas for his rage and his aggression. Yixing is too soft to hurt so much for so long.

And now, the Alpha has broken him. This is not Yixing, but some stranger who wears his face.

Chanyeol slides away from Yixing, who places a hand on his stomach. He is showing, but only just. By the next full moon, he will be swollen, round and heavy with his litter. He smiles, and once again, he is Chanyeol’s love, his destiny. But that rage simmers beneath, and Chanyeol can see it now. Yixing’s eyes are so heavy, his sadness is so obvious. “These are mine,” he says. “These are _ours_. I will kill every wolf in the forest before I kill my own pups.”

With a sigh, Chanyeol settles onto his back. He digs his thumb and forefinger into the inner corners of his eyes, which are burning and crusted. His head hurts, and his heart hurts, but he is swollen with pride and happiness. It only makes the hurt worse, knowing that however it ends, it will end in death. When he has recovered enough of his sensibilities to be coherent, he asks, “You think you can kill the Alpha? You can’t even save yourself from his fists.”

Yixing’s nostrils flare, but he says nothing. He caresses his stomach. Chanyeol longs to do the same, but he doubts he has the same privileges to it now that he has spoken. He rolls onto his side and stares at Yixing, who stares back boldly.

“I’m only saying that you don’t understand how hard it is to kill something, let alone something that will kill you in kind.” Yixing sniffs at him primly. Chanyeol frowns. “And once you’ve killed him, what will you do? They’ll come for you. They’ll send the Alpha’s mate into the afterlife with the Alpha. They won’t let you live.”

“They won’t have a choice,” Yixing says. “I’ll be pack mother. The next Alpha is in my litter, no matter who the father is.”

“It won’t work,” Chanyeol says, but hope tastes sweet on his tongue.

“It will. They would not kill a nursing mother, and I will be no usual nursing mother.” Yixing glows, his pride in this plan apparent. Chanyeol wonders how long he has pondered over it. How long he has waited for these pups so that they might protect him from tradition. It is true; for as long as his pups depend on him for life, he will be spared. What then, of the day when his children grow old enough to take their first bite of meat? They only prolong Yixing’s sentence. From the day he was claimed, his death became tied to the Alpha.

Still, Yixing takes Chanyeol’s hand and places it on his stomach. Chanyeol pulls him close and holds him there. If Yixing actually kills the Alpha, if he wins the sympathy of his jury with a newborn litter, if he only earns himself a handful of years before he is to face a reunion with his mate in the hereafter, then those few years will suffice for them to find some other way to spare him. Chanyeol will never stop fighting. As long as he can hold Yixing in his arms, he will never stop fighting.

 

Yixing grows rounder as the days grow longer. He is as bright and plump as the sun. New life glows on the highs of his cheeks and the curve of his belly.

And yet, there is something about new life that makes a violent alpha—more so. Chanyeol has seen it in the worst of families. He’s seen it in the best of families. Before he was born, Yura saw it in their own family. An alpha that can't control its temper around its omega will always strike harder, more frequently, more fatally as its omega grows rounder with pups. Chanyeol has seen it all of his life, though he never closely knew a mated pair that was expecting. It’s common enough that he does not consider it until the day that he sees Yixing limping towards his hunting troupe, helping to carry off a deer carcass with a small band of omegas.

His face is mottled black and blue. His lip is busted. He is frowning, and he does not meet Chanyeol’s eyes for the entire exchange. The alphas around Chanyeol grab him and hold him still, as though he might lash out or burst forward. Chanyeol licks his lips and leads hard into their strong hands. He just might. He whines as Yixing walks away, but Yixing does not look back. Chanyeol’s breathing quickens, and he breaks away from the hunters. He escapes towards his home, towards his bed.

Chanyeol is a good alpha. Chanyeol would seek to protect his omega and his pups, born or unborn. He would never lay a hand on them in anger. He would fight any who sought to bring them harm. He deserves a good omega, but the only one he’ll take is wretched. Doomed. Yixing deserves someone would would protect him, and yet—

—and yet the only harm he comes to is in his own home.

 

Even Yixing’s frown is beautiful. It is as pink and full as his smile. It is as soft as his kisses, as sweet as his voice. It is beautiful, and he has been wearing it often. He sits amongst the omegas, he sits amongst the pack, and sometimes he sits alone. He works and he rests and he eats, and he is always holding his stomach. He is always frowning. Chanyeol watches from the distance he is allowed, often frowning in turn.

_You wanted them_ , Chanyeol thinks, brow furrowed in confusion. _You asked for this._

He has so many questions, but Yixing will not come to the river. Chanyeol cannot see his thoughts, as often as he’s stared at Yixing trying. Chanyeol looks to the moon in the night and asks for kindness, asks for help, asks for happiness for Yixing. But each morning, he wakes to find that Yixing has not brightened.

He is still beautiful, Chanyeol decides, but he is sad. Chanyeol does not understand why.

 

Chanyeol lifts his head above the foliage. His ears are high on his head, his nostrils flare. He swivels from one side to the other. His tail beats the ground. To all sides, he can hear the low growling of other hunters, still stalking. Their prey is near; if Chanyeol does not hide himself, he is going to give them all away. But he leaps out of the brush and scampers off between the trees. Someone snaps at his heels as he goes, but Chanyeol takes off too quickly. It is only his fortune that none of them abandon the hunt to discipline him, for he follows the faint, desperate whining of a wolf he loves dearly.

Yixing is not in their territory, but Chanyeol follows his voice out to where he wails anyways. It is long before midday, still early morning. The heat of summer is rising, and soon, it will be stifling. For now, the forest is harmonious and calm, the coolness of shade yet untainted. Yixing’s head rests upon his forepaws. His ears are low, his body is sprawled to accommodate the bulge of his belly. His tail thumps against the ground as Chanyeol approaches. Yixing’s eyes follow him the entire way.

Chanyeol gallops towards Yixing on four legs, and then stumbles towards him on two. He comes naked, his fur abandoned on the ground behind him and nothing underneath. Yixing does not shed with him. He lifts his head, but barely. His ears remain pinned, and the thumping of his tail is restrained, little more than a shuffling wag in the grass.

“Yixing,” Chanyeol says, cupping his hands beneath Yixing’s jaw. He lifts Yixing’s head, stroking a hand back between his ears. “Come out, speak to me,” he says. Yixing stares back, but he makes no change. Chanyeol frowns. Yixing’s whining has ceased since they spotted one another, but—but surely Chanyeol had not imagined it? How else had he found Yixing lying here, waiting for him? “Yixing, please, tell me what’s wrong. I came here for you; I left the rest of the hunters for you, please, come out.”

Yixing’s ears drop, as though he feels guilt over Chanyeol’s sacrifice. Chanyeol does not understand. Where would Chanyeol have been, if not out hunting, as he did most mornings? How could Yixing not know what he was calling Chanyeol from? Yixing reaches up, placing a paw on Chanyeol’s knee. Beneath that, Yixing grasps him with his hand. The other pulls his fur up over his face. Chanyeol is struck breathless by what he sees.

Not only the bruises. Not only the cuts. Yixing is pale. His his are so dark and heavy that for a moment, Chanyeol cannot tell if they are bruised from a fist or from Yixing’s condition. He has a look about him, scared and frantic and desperate. He cups a hand over his stomach, which is mottled with the same marks he has been wearing on his face for weeks. Chanyeol’s blood boils. He has seen the handprints on Yixing’s arms, the flushed scratches on Yixing’s cheeks, the broken nose and broken fingers.

But this. Yixing has hidden this. Beneath furs and shirts and heavier layers, despite the oncoming heat of summer. He has hidden this, because now that Chanyeol sees it, he knows the desire to kill another wolf. He reaches forward, placing his hand over Yixing’s stomach. Yixing flinches, but Chanyeol does not stop. He needs to feel, he needs to know—

“Something’s wrong,” Yixing says. He sounds weak. Soft. Pitiful. Chanyeol grabs his hand, which is clammy. “I—I don’t know what to do, Chanyeol, I’m so scared—”

“Yixing, what happened?” Chanyeol tries to sound like an alpha, tries to be the rock that Yixing clings to, but his voice is shaking just like Yixing. Yixing closes his eyes and flinches away, scared by his urgency. “Yixing, please, I’m sorry, but I have to know—”

“Nothing,” Yixing interrupts. “Nothing— _different_ ,” he amends. “I’m so scared, I’m so scared that last night—last night when he,” Yixing struggles to say, cupping the most bruised parts of his stomach. “I’m so scared for the pups.”

Chanyeol’s eyes widen. No. _No._ No, no, no, no, “Yixing, no, tell me he didn’t—tell me he didn’t kill them—”

“I don’t know.” Yixing is crying. Tears are dripping off the tip of his nose into the dirt. His fingers have curled into claws. He is so pale, he is so pitiful. “Something is wrong, Chanyeol, I think I’m going to die.”

Chanyeol’s stomach drops away from him. He grasps at Yixing in desperation, but only for a moment. He is distraught, but for a moment, he is rational “Don’t move,” he snaps. He tears away from Yixing, swiping for his fur and pulling it over himself. He takes to the length of the forest on four paws, ripping through the dirt so quickly and so ferociously that he has mud caked deep beneath his nails, deep in the crevices between his pads, and still he runs. He stumbles over tree roots. He feels rocks and twigs embed themselves in his paws. He still smells Yixing’s fear, the intoxicating scent of omega all over him and everyone will know, everyone will know.

But Chanyeol does not stop running until he comes to the healer’s hut. He does not wait to see if she is with someone right now, instead butting his way through the pinned flap and yipping at her frantically. She grabs him by his snout and tears his fur away from his face. Chanyeol kneels before her as a man, his hands and feet filthy and bloody, his face wet with tears. “Help, Yixing needs your help, something is wrong—”

If any healer truly had future sight, sight beyond their own eyes, or sight of things that were not in front of them, Chanyeol sees it here in the cloudy gaze of this wolf before him. He has not even finished his complaint when she begins packing a bag, pouring sour-smelling liquids into a single skin and shaking them together. She takes plants and oils and throws them all together in a woven cloth, which she rolls closed and ties around Chanyeol’s neck. When he is a wolf, it hangs against his breast. She ushers him out of her tent, and off towards the forest. He takes off, yipping and scurrying, and the healer follows him, spryer than she appears.

As they leave their territory, so close to where Yixing awaits, Chanyeol can smell him. He can smell the fear and the misery and the desperation, but it’s all mild and stale compared to the rot of illness. How obvious it is now, how awful. The bag of supplies slaps against his chest and neck as he runs, but still he runs faster. The healer follows him through the brush, the both of them clipping trees and sliding on moss in their desperation. Yixing is on his side, knees curled up towards his torso when they arrive. He’s shivering. Chanyeol drops his head and shakes to loose the bag onto the ground. While the healer drops her fur and grabs it, Chanyeol approaches Yixing, nosing at him frantically.

Only when the healer grabs him by his ears and shoves him away does he stop. He circles them instead, listening as she croons softly to Yixing. He clings to her, crying and moaning and babbling. His words have no meaning; he is sweating profusely. Chanyeol lays down beside him, his head rested between his paws. He peers up at the healer, who presses her ear to Yixing’s stomach.

She sits up on her haunches, hands folded tightly in her lap. Yixing’s pitiful moans lower, as though he is falling asleep. Chanyeol’s ears stand forward, but he remains sprawled in the dirt. Her eyes are soft and wise when she tells him, “He’s lost them.”

Chanyeol whines, a long, low sound. His breathing comes fast. Every exhale is a whimper. He presses his nose into the dirt, and then his whole face. The healer lays her hand between his ears, but Chanyeol continues to claw around helplessly. His pups are dead. His pups are dead.

The healer takes his head in two hands and lifts him up. He bares his teeth at her, tries to shake her off, but she holds him still. “They are making him sick, alpha. We have to take them out.”

Chanyeol yanks himself free, pacing in frantic circles until he is tearing claw marks into the earth. The healer works without him, emptying her bag and propping Yixing up on her lap. She feeds him the sour mixture from her waterskin. Yixing coughs and spills it over the sides of his mouth, but he does drink most of it. She lays him flat on the ground and unclothes him. She spreads his legs and presses her fingers inside, humming cryptically. She slicks her fingers with an oil from her bag and presses her fingers in once more. Yixing rolls his head lazily and groans.

When the healer removes a long, hooked needle from her bag, Chanyeol drags himself away. He takes to knocking himself up against the sturdy trunks of the trees around him, drowning his sorrow in pain. Behind him, Yixing cries and whimpers. Chanyeol should be there beside him. Chanyeol should be holding his hand, caressing his face. Chanyeol should have been the one protecting him during this fragile time. Chanyeol should have never taken him, should have never burdened him with pups in the first place.

But Yixing had been so happy. What of the moment he wakes? What of when he realizes that he is empty and sick? Chanyeol glances back towards the healer, who is covered in blood up to her wrists. Yixing has taken the grass in his fists, small blades poking out between each knuckle. Unlike the blushing mothers of a healthy birth, Yixing is pale. Chanyeol swings his head away and drags himself through the forest, just so that he does not have to smell the bloody stench of his young being dragged into the world already dead.

 

“Chanyeol?”

Yixing blinks awake in the dying swelter of evening. He is still warm and sweating with fever, but he is awake. Chanyeol does not answer, he merely nuzzles close and presses his sloppy kisses across Yixing’s face. Yixing accepts him, cupping his cheek and holding him close. “What happened?” Yixing slurs. A ways off, the healer shifts where she is sitting. Chanyeol drags his mouth across Yixing’s to quiet him. Yixing lazily accepts his embrace, as though he is too exhausted to do anything more.

“Yixing,” the healer says, creeping forward. Chanyeol sniffles, sliding closer to Yixing to hold him more completely. He cannot protect Yixing from what the healer has to say, he cannot soften the blow with his body, but neither can he let go of Yixing to let him face it alone. “Yixing, do you remember anything that happened today?”

“No,” Yixing mumbles, turning his head away from Chanyeol to face the healer. She holds his gaze, much as Chanyeol moves and squirms and whines. She holds Yixing’s gaze and takes one of his hands in both of hers. Yixing looks down and sees the bloody ground, the pad tied between his legs, his swollen stomach—shrunken. “What—where—what have you—” He gasps, heaving for breath, grabbing onto Chanyeol in an attempt to sit up, but Chanyeol and the healer both hold him down.

“Your pups did not make it, Yixing. They died some time ago. I am sure you have an idea as to—as to why,” the healer tells him. She squeezes his hand. He closes his eyes, his lips tight. “They were making you sick. They could not stay inside of you. Now, you will heal.”

_Don’t tell him the rest of it_ , Chanyeol thinks. _Don’t tell him, don’t make it worse._ He noses at Yixing’s face, mouthing at the tears that bulge from beneath his clenched lids. Yixing wraps a hand around Chanyeol’s arm and holds tight, tighter than he ever has before. There will be bruises in the shapes of Yixing’s fingers come morning.

“You have had a difficult time with these pups," the healer says. "They poisoned you, and they did not come out easily. You must know, Yixing—" She pauses until he looks up at her. "—you may not be able to conceive again." Chanyeol chokes back a sob. Yixing stiffens beneath him. Chanyeol does not have the courage to look into his face.

“That can’t be true,” Yixing says to the healer. She hums softly, as though to comfort him, but he shifts, jostling them both away from him. “No, that _can’t_ be true, it _can’t_ , he’ll kill me if I can’t—if I don’t—” He’s breathing too hard, too fast, he’s moving too much. “He’ll kill me and find another mate, I have to—what did you _do_ to me?”

“Yixing,” the healer says. Chanyeol cowers in the dirt beside Yixing. Kill him? The Alpha won’t kill him. The Alpha _can’t_ kill him. Yixing tries to rise up from where he lies, but the healer holds him down and strokes his hair. “There are things that the Alpha would kill you for long before he knew of any infertility.” Yixing does not still, instead rolling against the ground in his misery. He is shaking with sobs.

“You can’t tell him, please, you can’t,” he begs. Chanyeol tries to get close, tries to hold onto him, but Yixing will not stop moving.

For a long moment, the healer does not speak. She allows Yixing to continue babbling, allows him to vent his fears and his sadness and his frustration. Chanyeol is whimpering, dragging his white belly against the ground until the fur there is green and brown. They are a couple devastated, too much taken from them too suddenly, when she finally speaks again.

“There are things in this life that cannot be hidden for any great length of time,” she says. “My silence will only buy you a moment’s worth of safety. You must hope that after that, our Alpha is more merciful than he lets us believe.”

A tremble runs across Yixing’s limbs, down his spine. Chanyeol huffs and snuffles in the soil. His ears lay flat against his head. The healer rises to bring Yixing back to his Alpha and explain, in the vaguest of terms, how he lost his litter. The smell of death is so strong on him that he need not even wash Chanyeol away this time.

 

Though Chanyeol interacts little with those wolves who live around him, it is obvious to him when the news of Yixing’s loss begins to travel its way from Middlemost to where Chanyeol lays his head at the outskirts. A melancholy, poisoned with gossip and fascination, spreads from home to home. It skirts its way around Chanyeol’s door, bypassing him easily. He keeps himself closed away and turns his ears from those who talk around him.

He goes hungry for several days in proper mourning. Only he knows that those were his pups. Only he knows that Yixing’s freedom depended on their healthy delivery. While childless, Yixing has no power. While childless, he is merely the Alpha’s unused vessel, an unfulfilled duty that may be replaced at any time. But a bond is not broken in life.

Chanyeol aches for a way to wrest Yixing from that home. To steal him away and take him somewhere where he would be valued and protected. Chanyeol’s home is too small and too weak, and there are too many wolves in this pack who would tear his head from his shoulders to drag the unfaithful omega back to his mate. This violence—it is not new. Chanyeol has known it since he was a child. And yet, the way it poisons him is unfamiliar. How many omegas have suffered such plights who did not earn his sympathy? How many have escaped?

Pitiful and ignorant, Chanyeol wonders if this cycle ever ends in any way that is not death.

 

The shout of the Alpha’s screams has never been a foreign sound to the pack. He is a wolf that spends most of his time shouting; to be heard, to be feared, to hear himself travel through his territory with a ferocity that scares the birds from the trees. The intimidation of some Alphas comes in their quietness, in their mystery, but not Chanyeol’s Alpha.

What is new is Yixing’s voice. At night, through the thick walls of Middlemost, screaming out. Crying. Chanyeol can hear wolves whisper about it; as he passes meat off to the omegas, as he sits around a bonfire with his pack members, even firsthand as he creeps through the center late into the night, desperate to hear that at least Yixing is alive. Yixing has not come to him in weeks, so instead, Chanyeol goes to him.

Yixing does not leave because he is being kept at home, Chanyeol hears. Not from Yixing himself, but from those who live close to him. What sort of careless omega loses an entire litter? they ask. Chanyeol bites deep into his tongue to hold his silence. If they could have seen Yixing cry, if they could have known his pain, they would not speak so freely. He bares his teeth at those who approach him and retreats to his too-small home and his too-large bed. He visits the river every day, but he never goes back to that place just beyond their territory, where Yixing’s blood still rots in the soil.

 

“I’m afraid,” Yixing admits to Chanyeol when he finally leaves Middlemost. He walks gingerly. He is hurt, and timid, and small, but still he comes to Chanyeol. They sit a ways apart, each dipped partially into the river. Yixing refuses to let Chanyeol touch him.

“What are you afraid of?” Chanyeol asks him softly.

Yixing shifts, uneasy. He plucks at blades of grass, the way Chanyeol would as a child. He tears them away, setting them in a pile to the side. “The healer has not spoken to him,” Yixing begins slowly, “but I’m afraid he knows, anyways. Or at least suspects.”

Chanyeol rises up somewhat. Not high or fast enough to scare Yixing. “What does he say?”

“Only that broken omegas can’t be fixed,” Yixing says. It’s not a novel idea, not here, but in this new light, it turns Chanyeol’s stomach. “I’m worried that if I don’t conceive during my next heat, he’ll kill me. It will be one full year without bringing him pups.”

Chanyeol desperately wishes to crawl forward and touch Yixing, hold him, comfort him. But Chanyeol’s presence is just as much of a burden on Yixing as everything else these days. The weight of sadness and sympathy is not soft enough for Yixing, as it still lacks the understanding and the empathy that he needs. Chanyeol overflows with kindness; kindness is not enough for Yixing now. He needs so much more.

But an alpha will never understand Yixing, whether that alpha is Chanyeol or any other wolf in the mountains. “You have to run,” Chanyeol tells him. It is the alpha in him that seeks survival rather than fulfillment. Yixing glances up at him. There is not enough hope in his eyes. He brushes Chanyeol’s suggestion aside without consideration.

“I can’t,” he says. Chanyeol seeks to argue with him, but Yixing will have no argument. “I have dreamed of running for so many moons—but he has read my thoughts. He’s told me that I’ll be Hunted. Whether he is alive or dead, if I leave him, I will be Hunted, and I will be brought back to him so that he can make an example of an omega that disgraces its mate.” Yixing’s voice is so flat, so toneless, but Chanyeol feels almost sick with the very thought. “I’m much less afraid of death than I am of what he would do, if I ran and he found me.”

“He won’t,” Chanyeol mutters, but not loud enough for Yixing to dignify him with a response. When they part and slip back towards the clearing, neither of them have to bathe themselves because they have not touched at all.

 

The first heat of fall comes only a few nights before the full hunter’s moon. It is a mated pair situated not far from Chanyeol, so he knows before most. The smell of it is mild, sweet but not enticing. Perhaps it’s because the omega is mated, or perhaps it’s because it is not Yixing.

Perhaps it is because it heralds the beginning of a new season, in which Yixing’s body will be tested and may be found wanting. Chanyeol does not know. He has seen the healer, but she will not speak of it. He has not seen Yixing except in accidental glances, skirting around the center towards Middlemost. Chanyeol's white wolf is distinct and so these trips are usually at night, when Yixing has been shuttered away like every other wolf during the night. Still, every once in awhile, Chanyeol gets to look his fill. Yixing looks sad and alone. If Chanyeol could, he would howl to Yixing, so that he could know that is not true.

 

The alphas that surround Chanyeol each day—they don’t speak much. They may bark out jeers and laughter, or snap orders at one another as though they were speaking to children, or even whisper the rarest offerings of gentle advice. (Were Chanyeol a better alpha, he would take offense to how pitiful they find him, but he’s not, and so he accepts it all eagerly.) Still, these breaks in the silence are rare; they do not speak much. Prattling is an omega’s domain; an alpha ought to carry the mysterious weight of silence.

Chanyeol has only been away from them for a year, but he is already unused to the chatter of the omegas at the center. Their workspaces buzz all the way out to the edge of the clearing, scaring the game further into the forests where Chanyeol hunts. Yixing is quiet; Yixing has always been quiet. But Yixing is a strange omega by their standards.

And so when Chanyeol approaches the dressers with his kill, he is not shocked to hear them speaking Yixing’s name. Two omegas reach for the beast over his shoulder, but he walks past them, towards the hut where they work. They gripe at him, but follow dutifully. Chanyeol can follow the chopped pieces of conversation as they walk.

“—third day of his heat and he still has not conceived—”

“—no way to tell. It would be easier for the Alpha to just put him down now than to—”

“—would have made a much better mate than that flea-ridden bitch—”

The novelty of the Alpha’s mate has dampened. It has been a year and Yixing is still not the pack mother. And he is in heat, but Chanyeol would not have heard of it until after, when talk went around that he had not conceived. Spitefully, he drops the carcass on the ground at the door of the work hut, earning the ire of the omegas around him. He skirts past them, towards the center. Their eyes follow him, and so he moves slowly, hesitantly. Uncertainly stains each of his steps. He thinks he sees Middlemost through a break in the halls around it, but he cannot be certain before he loses his nerve and turns tail towards his home at the edge.

 

The gossip in the center first grows in volume, and then audacity, and then finally in reach. Chanyeol no longer has to wander amongst the omegas to hear their hateful words; as long as he is amongst other wolves, he hears of Yixing’s unfruitfulness. He hears of how long the Alpha has suffered so useless an omega, how much care he has given him while receiving nothing in return.

Chanyeol does not while his time amongst other wolves much in these few days.

 

In these days, Chanyeol does not contribute to the pack. In the days of Yixing’s heat, he sustains himself. He knows little of plants, but he knows enough. He eats only what he knows is safe. He leaves the large prey for organized troupes and hunts small game for himself. He sleeps under the stars. He dreams about the nights that he would have taken Yixing with him out to other clearings, smaller clearings than their own, sleeping privately beneath the band of stars swiping through the sky. He makes his bed in the moss as often as he does in his furs.

When he comes home for clean clothes, Chanyeol has been in the forest for three days. That morning, he earns a neat set of slashes across his cheek and a threat of expulsion into the wilds beyond his pack’s hunting grounds, should his uselessness persist. He is no longer young enough to be acquitted for such crimes, and he wears the warning where everybody will see it. His face has not quite begun healing, as it still gapes and weeps, but it is not so swollen and bloody as it was when the sun was higher in the sky.

Still, when Yixing finds him washing in the river, Yixing holds him gently and licks him clean, himself. Chanyeol accepts this kindness, this tenderness. He is light, bouncy, intoxicated on the lingering scent of Yixing’s heat. His rut simmers so that he can almost sense its oncoming, but it does not boil. He is not crazed; he is content.

It has not yet been seven days since Chanyeol last saw Yixing, but it could have been an eternity. Every moment Yixing stays locked away in Middlemost is another moment closer to death. Seeing him here is a strange thing, almost like a vision of the moon, herself. Yixing works dutifully, tending to Chanyeol’s face with such determination that by the time he has finished, Chanyeol is uncertain of whether he had meant to speak with Yixing, and about what. He is dulled by the sweet scent of his love, of his destiny, of his intended before him, beautiful as a man with his dark fur wrapped around his shoulders.

Only the hardened look in Yixing’s bruised eyes shakes Chanyeol from his trance. He lifts his head, his frown agitating his stinging cheek. “Yixing?” he asks, his voice low.

“The Alpha intends to kill me,” he says.

Chanyeol only has enough faculties to blink quietly at Yixing, untouched by the meaning of his words. “I don’t understand,” he says.

Yixing’s face creases unhappily. Disappointment. Chanyeol curls into himself, confused. His dampening mood sobers him. He sits upright and faces Yixing seriously. Yixing stares him down for a moment before saying, “He has spoken with the healer. He has heard the gossip amongst the pack. He is growing impatient with—with my lack of pups.” His hand protectively covers his stomach, which has long healed since this summer, as he speaks. It is clear, even if only to Chanyeol, that though it is clear and unmarked, it is also empty. Chanyeol lifts his gaze back to Yixing’s eyes.

“And he has told you that he intends to kill you?”

Yixing scowls at Chanyeol, who recoils from the overt reproach in that look. Has Yixing ever looked at Chanyeol like this before? The jubilation of having Yixing so fertile and so near to him begins to dissipate. Chanyeol longs for his childhood friend and does not completely recognize the wolf sitting before him.

“No,” Yixing snaps. “By the time he tells me, my head will be off of my shoulders. Don’t you understand? I can’t wait for him to _tell_ me, Chanyeol, I need to do something _now._ ”

Warily, Chanyeol waits for Yixing to continue. He doesn’t. His chest heaves, as though he is winded from his outburst, and his eyes widen as he begins to realize what he’s done. He clamps his mouth shut and bows his head repentantly. If Chanyeol were any other alpha, perhaps he would punish Yixing.

But he isn’t. And Yixing isn’t any other omega, so they sit in silence, appraising each other as though they were strangers. It isn’t right. Chanyeol stares at the wolf he has known since he was born, at the wolf he was certain would warm his furs at night, cook his meals and birth his pups. Instead, Yixing has been broken and bent until Chanyeol cannot see the wolf he once knew unless he peers through the cracks. There, he finds Yixing trembling, terrified for his life. He is certain that he has not conceived, and his heat has all but ended.

“What will you do?” Chanyeol asks. Yixing lifts his head, his eyes meek as he peers up at Chanyeol.

“I need your help,” he says. “Please.”

Chanyeol’s heart takes off in a sprint at the very sound of the words. Yixing speaks them shamefully, as though he is fearful of their meaning. His hands wring in his lap. His face, still smeared with the stray streaks of Chanyeol’s blood, hangs towards the ground. Chanyeol already does not like the sound of what Yixing has to ask of him. But he asks, “What?”

“Come to Middlemost tonight,” Yixing says. “My heat is nearing its end. My Alpha will be with me. He will eat in our home. I—I’m going to poison him,” Yixing whispers, his voice dropping so low that Chanyeol strains to hear him. His heart almost drowns out the hush of Yixing’s voice. “I will let you into Middlemost so that you can kill him.”

The birds and insects around them are a poor audience for this display. They shriek where there should be silent. Chanyeol cannot look into Yixing’s eyes when he hears this treason from his very lips. An omega, a bringer of life, plotting such treachery. Not just any omega, but Chanyeol’s omega. The Alpha’s omega. The wolf who would have been pack mother, forebearer of kings, gift of life. Chanyeol could be sick from the very thought. This is what Yixing wanted, Chanyeol remembers. This was his desire all this time. When he had been pregnant, it had seemed so much different. He’d had life within him. Now, everything is death, and too sudden.

Yixing’s desperation has made him reckless. “It won’t work,” Chanyeol says. “They’ll Hunt you. They’ll kill you anyways. You have no heirs, you have nothing to protect you.”

Yixing hesitates, but after a moment, he cups a hand against Chanyeol’s uninjured cheek. He lifts Chanyeol’s head and looks into his eyes. “I’ll have you,” he says. Chanyeol’s lip quivers and he begins to shake his head, but Yixing does not let him speak. “You’ll be the wolf who wears the blood of the old Alpha. You will take Middlemost, you will be able to call off the Hunt.”

All at once, Chanyeol understands what Yixing intends to do. “You’ll leave,” he says. “You’ll leave _me_.”

Yixing does not look away from Chanyeol, though his eyes are filled with sadness and guilt. More than fear or pity or regret, Chanyeol sees determination in his stare. The resolute set of his jaw hardens him in a very alien way. No longer is he the sweet, pretty omega that the Alpha claimed under this same moon a year ago. There is a beauty about him, but not one that Chanyeol has ever seen an omega wear. Yixing is strange to Chanyeol like this.

“There has to be another way,” Chanyeol says. Yixing frowns, and Chanyeol—Chanyeol almost feels cowed. But he lifts his chin and sets his shoulders and stares down his nose at Yixing when he says, “I can’t lose you, Yixing. There has to be some other way.”

“I’m leaving,” Yixing tells him. “No matter what happens, I’m leaving.” He shuffles forward, their knees bumping against one another. Chanyeol looks down at them, and then back up to Yixing. “All I’m asking is that you make it safer for me to leave.” He cups Chanyeol’s face this time, with both hands. The cuts across Chanyeol’s cheek burn in Yixing’s grasp. Still, he does not pull away.

“No, Yixing, please,” he says, his voice soft. He grabs a hold of Yixing’s waist, clutching at the fur there. Yixing slides forward until he is almost in Chanyeol’s lap. “I won’t do it,” Chanyeol says. “You have to figure out another way, I don’t—I can’t—”

“You’ll have to,” Yixing tells him. Chanyeol doesn’t understand what that means until Yixing leans forward and bites him.

He sits in Chanyeol’s lap as a man, but his bite feels like that of a wolf. Chanyeol cries out, his fingers curling into tight fists in the fur Yixing wears loosely around his body. His skin breaks and blood bubbles to the surface, but still, Yixing bites harder. Chanyeol tries to pull him off, but Yixing remains clasped around his neck. For a moment, Chanyeol wonders frantically if he has been attacked. And then, Yixing releases him and licks placidly at the bite. It spans across the base of his neck, from his clavicle to the meat of his shoulder.

It could be a claiming bite, were Chanyeol an omega, and were they an unmated pair. But it’s not. Instead, it’s—it’s guilt. Yixing has branded Chanyeol. Now, everyone will know. The Alpha will know. Yixing leans back so that Chanyeol can see his face. He leans forward, pressing a kiss to Chanyeol’s lips, but Chanyeol is unresponsive. He does not know how to respond. His neck throbs. Yixing skims his nose across Chanyeol’s face.

“I’m going to go home now,” Yixing tells him. “I’m going to smell like you. I will poison my Alpha, and then I will wait for you. If you don’t come, he’ll kill me, and then he’ll kill you.”

Chanyeol’s gut tightens in fear. The reality of what is happening drenches him like a cold rain. He shoves Yixing out of his lap, stumbling unsteadily to his feet. Yixing pulls his fur tighter around himself, watching Chanyeol warily. “Please,” he says, “please come tonight. I’ll be waiting for you.” Chanyeol cannot find anything worth saying before Yixing pulls the fur up over his head and takes off through the forest on all fours. He stares after him long after Yixing has disappeared.

 

For hours after Yixing has left, Chanyeol worries that the sun has stopped in the sky. Every time he glances up towards it, it seems to have moved hardly at all from where it was the last time he checked. Time crawls so slowly, the world only inching when it once scurried. Chanyeol’s neck throbs where Yixing bit him; he wants to be angry, he wants to be resentful, he wants to be smarter than to have been bitten by some wretched omega.

But through all of it, Chanyeol has a piece of Yixing on him. He doesn’t have to go to Middlemost tonight. He doesn’t have to go back to the pack ever, if he doesn’t want to. Life as a rogue would be better than certain death, but Yixing is waiting for him. Yixing has promised that he will weaken the Alpha, if Chanyeol will only come to take the title in his bloody teeth. This decision weighs heavily on Chanyeol, who wears it down into the dirt as he paces.

Whatever he does, he will never see Yixing again.

When the sun begins to set, beyond sight through the canopy, Chanyeol begins the walk back towards home. He goes on two legs, his head high and his bite pulsing in time with his heart.

 

The walk to Middlemost is unobstructed. Wherever Chanyeol goes, the roads are clear. Each wolf sits gathered at a fire or kept away in his home to eat. The pack comes together in small groups at this time of night. Families and neighbors. Chanyeol walks between them without earning their attention. Each step is a victory of luck, though Chanyeol feels anything but. He recognizes Middlemost only by its size, and he walks toward it, tall and contrary.

Middlemost is almost twice Chanyeol’s height. Chanyeol, who has never lived in a home in which he could stand upright, cranes his neck back to peer up at it. Up to his knees, it is stone, and from there up, it is thick, aged wood. Cut from the trees that were cleared to make these grounds. The oldest building in this hamlet, in which every Alpha has laid his head since their pack put down roots and claimed land. Inside, Yixing lives with his mate. By morning, Chanyeol will lay his claim to this place, and Yixing will be long gone.

The door into Middlemost is propped open, but Chanyeol hesitates before reaching for it. He has never been inside Middlemost before. He does not know its halls, nor its rooms, nor its traps. Moreover, Chanyeol has never killed another wolf in his life. As a poor, bastard wretch, he is the wolf that would be fated for an early death at the hands of another aggrieved alpha. Chanyeol is upsetting the natural discourse of life; should he kill the Alpha, will he be accepted? Will he even be acknowledged?

_For Yixing_ , he tells himself as he pulls the door open and steps through it into the darkness. _For his safety_ , as he finds himself in a large, unlit room with an empty doorway in the far wall. _For his happiness_ , as he approaches it, the smell of Yixing becoming thicker the deeper he traverses. The next room is lit by a small fire in a small fire pit. Yixing sits at its edges across from Chanyeol, his serene expression shadowed dramatically by its light. In his lap, he holds the head of the Alpha. Yixing caresses his face, brushes his hair.

But he has already done what he promised to do. The Alpha’s face is pale, even in the warm light of the fire. His body, nearly twice the size of Yixing, is curled into a ball as though he were a frightened child. His expression is pained. Chanyeol is uncertain that he has even noticed this intrusion. When Yixing sees Chanyeol, he pushes the Alpha onto the ground and rises to his feet. Everything about him is slow and graceful—exactly opposite Chanyeol, who is restless and irritable.

“You came,” Yixing breathes, wrapping his arms around Chanyeol’s neck to pull him down into an embrace. Chanyeol slides an arm around Yixing’s waist, but he stares over Yixing’s shoulder at the Alpha. He meets those wide, unseeing eyes timidly. The Alpha makes no indication that he has noticed him at all.

“What now?” Chanyeol asks him.

“Take him to the fires. Take him before his pack, and then tear his throat out. Show them who you are,” Yixing says, raking his hands through Chanyeol’s hair. Chanyeol bends towards him, offering more of himself. Yixing takes freely, touching and kissing that which he will not have once he leaves.

“What about you?” Chanyeol asks when Yixing’s mouth finds his bite mark. He sucks at it gently, wary of the pain it still brings Chanyeol.

“There is a window in the back. I’m going to escape that way while you have the pack distracted.”

Chanyeol turns his head to nuzzle Yixing, who stills to let him do so. “And you’ll never come back.”

Yixing pulls away from Chanyeol only enough to look up at him. He leans in, drawing Chanyeol into a kiss the likes of which Chanyeol never knew he could receive. He is on fire, from his thundering heart to his burning limbs. Everything about him is scorching; he is the sun, bright and blazing and merciless. To tear the throat from another wolf—Chanyeol would not do it for anything but this, Yixing’s love so painfully obvious between them. There are so many regrets in his pretty face when they part, but Yixing speaks none of them. All that he says is, “I wish it had been you.”

He steps away from Chanyeol before they can become lost in one another. If Yixing is going to move through the cover of night, he will need to leave soon. The sun has all but set, and the sky has purpled deeply in its absence. Chanyeol approaches the fallen Alpha in a few long strides. He moves as though something else is controlling him, his mind blank except for Yixing, who is watching. He drags the Alpha up off of the ground, and in return, he gets nothing more than a weak, gurgled growl. Chanyeol looks back towards Yixing, who holds his gaze for only a moment before he steals out of the room, towards his window of escape.

Chanyeol drags the Alpha out of Middlemost by the grip he has on his arm. His feet drag uselessly in the dirt. It takes all of Chanyeol’s youthful strength to drag this fully grown wolf, this behemoth of a beast, out to where he may call for witnesses. They come as he beckons them, keeping a fair distance between themselves and this miserable alpha who holds their leader, broken in his hands.

He tastes blood when he tears the Alpha’s throat out with his teeth, but in this time of loss, it is stale. Right now, Yixing tastes freedom, which is much sweeter. Chanyeol drops the body of a large wolf with no status at his feet. He spits out whatever pieces are still in his teeth. His mouth is sour and he would like for nothing more than to be washed clean of this sin. Instead, he faces the awe of the pack— _his_ pack. They acknowledge him, they accept him. All heads lift to the moon. The shouting begins soon after.

 

It could be an eternity since Yixing left when they finally speak his name. The omegas cry out for justice, begging Chanyeol to drag Yixing from Middlemost to meet the same end as his mate. The cries of a few become the cries of many, and before Chanyeol can stop them, they have taken to Middlemost in search for Yixing. He meets them there to stifle their confusion. His voice is deep and loud as he addresses the pack, that angry part of it which has not retired after the excitement.

“It’s empty,” he calls out to those inside. “He had already fled when I came to take the Alpha.”

The omegas turn their heads to scoff, but the alphas turn to Chanyeol in that moment. They lift their heads eagerly, awaiting his verdict. Awaiting the commencement of a Hunt. Chanyeol stares them down, awaiting the moment that they speak of it. The quiet of the clearing is broken by the far-off crackling of bonfires, the shrieking of insects, the rustling of the forest in the nighttime winds. The world is growing colder, and Chanyeol thinks gloomily of Yixing in that coming snow.

“Alpha,” cry the wolves. Chanyeol does not respond at first, until it strikes him that this is his title now. “Call for the Hunt, Alpha,” his pack pleads. Chanyeol looks beyond the the stone huts, the wood huts, the homes made of oiled skins. Over their very tops, he can see the beginning of the tree line. Chanyeol watches it quietly. He is thinking of Yixing, but to them, he could be thinking of anything.

“He will have left our grounds by the time we reach him,” Chanyeol declares. The wolves around him wilt at his words. “Let him rot in the coming cold.”

Never in his life has Chanyeol had the privilege of saying something and having those around him take his words as they are.

These wolves around him hear his command, and they bow to it.

 

Had Chanyeol undertaken this task at dawn, then there would be much more to be done. The shift of power is not so smooth when the oldest wolves are awake. There will be dissenters, there will be protests, and there will be those who are angry that they, themselves, did not sneak into the Alpha’s dwelling and drink the blood from his throat. In the morning, the pack will come alive and have much to say about the night’s events.

Chanyeol will not be there when they do.

He is left alone in Middlemost, only hoping that his order to leave Yixing be has been heeded. He wanders the tall, wide rooms of Middlemost alone, smelling Yixing in all of them. More than that, he smells an alpha, a foul smell that haunts him. Chanyeol never knew the wolf who claimed his friend, and as he wanders this home, he is glad that he never will. How Yixing ever took comfort in a wolf so vile, Chanyeol will never understand.

In the room farthest from the front entrance, there are pelts and cloths and needles and pots and everything smells like Yixing. Chanyeol settles in this room, examining Yixing’s handiwork, running his fingers through his furs, searching for that midnight skin that holds Yixing’s wolf, even knowing that he will not find it here. He stares through the window until he can hear no voices close to him, no rustling that might imply wolves awaiting his appearance. He peers through the window, pushing it out so that he may stick his head through.

On all sides, the clearing is empty. Some homes have lights within them, but most are dark. Climbing through the window is difficult with Chanyeol’s broad shoulders, but he squeezes through with a desperate silence. He falls to the other side, tumbling into the grass, and he takes off on all fours before he can be spotted. As nothing more than a white shadow, he disappears into the forest.

Like Yixing, he will never come back. The parting does not hurt nearly as bad as he’d thought it would.

 

Only as Chanyeol approaches the waterfall that hails the edge of their territory does he consider the vastness of the forest in which Yixing is hiding. Chanyeol has no way of telling whether Yixing stopped here, or if he came this way, or if he is still in the pack’s territory at all. He sniffs at the ground, at the trees, at the air over the water, but he finds nothing. He follows the water back towards the pack, moving through the forest by whatever scant moonlight slips its way through the leaves above him. He worries that he will never find Yixing’s trail. He worries that he will find it and not recognize it. He worries that he will not be the first to find it.

But though the first hints of Yixing in the air are subtle, Chanyeol knows them as well as if he had buried his face in Yixing’s pelt. He has known this scent from birth, and it is made sweeter by his recent fertility. Chanyeol follows with saliva collecting beneath his tongue, in the spaces between his fangs, dripping at his jowls. He follows at a trot, and then a gallop. He finds Yixing, though he is the very color of midnight, curled amongst the tree roots sprawling from a thick, old trunk. Yixing is dead asleep, vulnerable as a newborn pup. Chanyeol wakes him with an invasive snuffle, nosing beneath his tail for that which had led him through the forest. Yixing growls and snaps in his surprise.

“Yixing, stop,” Chanyeol begs him, pulling his fur back and raising his hands in surrender. Yixing stares at him as though he were a ghost, as though no living wolf has ever been as white as the wolf he has known since he was a child. Could he have expected Chanyeol to perish after he left? No; when he speaks, his voice is a hushed whisper.

“You followed me,” he says. The wonder in his words is undercut with fear. “Chanyeol, what have you done,” he asks, though it does not come to Chanyeol as a question.

“I’m coming with you,” Chanyeol tells him. “I won’t let you leave alone.”

“Chanyeol, they’ll come looking for you. They’ll find both of us—”

“Yixing,” Chanyeol snaps. He edges forward, expecting Yixing to pull away from him, but instead, Yixing burrows into the warmth of Chanyeol’s body. Chanyeol wraps his arms around him and finds him trembling. He lays Yixing down in the moss, spreading out over him. Yixing’s eyes are wet, tears tracking their way back down his face. Chanyeol wipes them away.

“There’ll be no Alpha,” Yixing says. “You’ve killed the pack.”

Chanyeol is staring at Yixing’s lips when he says, “So be it. It’s not our pack anymore.”

When Chanyeol kisses Yixing, Yixing opens to it as though he had known it was coming. He pushes his fur away completely, sliding his fingers into the thick hairs of Chanyeol’s where it is bunched at his waist. Naked, they sprawl together in the leaves collecting along the forest floor. They pile together here more than most places, in the small valley between two great, gnarled roots, directly in the line of leaves falling from the branches above. Chanyeol’s heart pounds, igniting his pulse in the divets of the bite Yixing gave him. He drags his mouth down Yixing’s throat to his old claim mark. Yixing stills beneath him.

“I want to tear it out of your skin,” Chanyeol growls. The innate underling in Yixing cows to the alpha within Chanyeol. He turns his head to the side so that it is stretched cleanly, visible all across his neck. Silently, he is inviting Chanyeol to do as he wishes. Chanyeol pulls his fur up and bears the teeth of a wolf. He is as gentle as he knows how when he tears into scarred and healthy flesh alike, though Yixing still breathes out soft whimpers of pain on every exhale. Chanyeol licks it when he has finished, but it is ugly and sloppy even when it is clean.

It would never be accepted as a claiming bite, not on an omega who had already been claimed. Instead, it is the destruction of a claim. Chanyeol slips out of his fur and back into Yixing’s arms, which are trembling, and he is satisfied with his work. No longer will he see the mark of Yixing’s mate, clean and unchallenged. _Destiny_ , Chanyeol thinks, pulling Yixing into a more feverish embrace. _Fate_ , he thinks when Yixing, still pale and quiet, accepts him dutifully.

Yixing is his. Yixing was made for him. Yixing fits perfectly beneath him, responds instantly to his lust. He must be in pain, he must be hungry, he must be tired, but when Yixing feels Chanyeol’s arousal, his body responds in kind. His body is still wet for Chanyeol, who takes him according to instinct. This night, Chanyeol became an animal—killing for power. Now, he mates as one, rutting wildly into his omega. Yixing returns his fervor, biting down into Chanyeol’s reddened, burning mark when he can no longer silence his cries himself. Chanyeol grits his teeth and lets himself be bitten where he is already sore and marked. Yixing tears scratches into his back and digs bruises into his arms. Chanyeol takes them all and gives nothing back in kind. They are from his mate, who has been bruised enough for one lifetime.

 

“Where did you intend to go?” Chanyeol asks, his head propped on Yixing’s uninjured shoulder. The light of day is not far off, and with it will come the realization that the new Alpha has stowed away during the night. The connections between Chanyeol and the late Alpha’s mate will come to light with the dawn. They will certainly be Hunted, and most viciously.

But Yixing’s neck continues to bleed, slowly as it does, and he is too tired to walk as of yet. Chanyeol rests at his side, breathing his scent, knowing that Yixing is his mate. Not only now, but since the day he was born. Yixing hums softly, stroking a hand through his hair. Chanyeol is lulled almost to sleep, so placid that he does not immediately comprehend Yixing when he says, “There is a wandering pack that passes near our territory before each winter. I intend to find them.”

Chanyeol breathes in. Everything is Yixing. He breathes out. Everything is Yixing. He breathes in, and he hears what Yixing is saying. “Find them?” he asks. He lifts his head. “Find them, and then what?” When he looks down at Yixing, Yixing is staring back at him quietly. Chanyeol lifts up until he is sitting over Yixing, frowning down at him. “You’re looking for a new pack?”

“Would you rather roam the wild as lone wolves?” Yixing asks, almost derisively. Chanyeol bears his teeth, but Yixing will never be completely controlled again, and certainly not by a wolf who won’t beat him.

“I would rather you don’t go crawling at the feet of some backwater pack of barbarians,” Chanyeol snaps.

“So says the bastard,” Yixing growls.

Their quarreling could escalate easily into shouting, into barking and bitter clawing, but Chanyeol’s vision quickly becomes unfocused as his hearing centers behind him. Leaves rustling underfoot; not close enough to attack, but edging this way. Chanyeol pulls his fur up and hears much clearer. Quiet breathing. The scent of pack carried on a breeze that also carries the scent of rain. Yixing is a wolf when Chanyeol looks back down at him. He nudges Yixing to standing, and then scurrying away, and then running.

Behind them, the steady footfalls of stalking careen into the thunder of chase. Yixing’s shoulder smells strongly of blood in the damp morning, and it leaves a clear trail of them as they tear through leaves and grasses and tree roots towards the edge of the pack’s territory. Yixing begins unsteadily, but as the adrenaline of being chased begins to rush into him, he keeps time with Chanyeol easily. Chanyeol runs just behind him, the last barrier between Yixing and the wolves that are gaining ground on them too soon.

On this side of their territory, the river cuts through a fair distance before they reach the border. Together, they crash through it, swimming desperately as the hunters come upon the banks. Yixing and Chanyeol are dragging their wet, heavy bodies out just as their nearest pursuers dive in, and Chanyeol’s heart is beating so hard and so high in his throat that he fears if he inhales too deeply, he may swallow it. Every muscle in his body is burning, every breath he takes stabs him like a knife, but he keeps running. If Yixing does not stop, then there is no reason that Chanyeol should have to.

So they run. They run, and they keep running. It feels like so much farther than they need to go, but Chanyeol does not have the courage to stop and listen for their pursuers. He would rather run Yixing ragged, run him until he is gasping for air, run him until he collapses to the ground than to stop for the few seconds it takes to tear out an omega’s throat. The forest that they own is not so much different than the forest that they don’t. The lines on this side of the territory are not so clear, so when Yixing finally trips and stumbles and falls into the grass, rolling in an exhausted heap before finally landing on his side, Chanyeol is not certain of where they are.

Yixing stays low, heaving for breath, wheezing on every inhale, panting on every exhale. Chanyeol circles him nervously. Everything about him buzzes; his muscles tingle, his ears hum, his heart beats so hard and so fast that it may as well be just a low whirring in his chest. His head swivels around towards every slight sound, but as long as he waits for Yixing to stand up, nothing comes for them. How long have they been running? How far have they gone? Chanyeol looks around, lifting his head to sniff and peer into the dim light of morning. He does not recognize this part of the forest.

He had known that they would go beyond any piece of their territory than they had ever gone before. Still, Chanyeol is surprised by how new the world around him looks. Around him are similar trees, and yet they are so different. Similar dirt which feels nothing like home. Similar game which smells nothing like the prey on which he has feasted all his life. Yixing picks his head up off of the ground, only to drop it back down a moment later. Chanyeol sits at his side, licking his face calmly, even as he remains alert of their surroundings.

When Yixing is finally able to lift himself up to his feet once more, Chanyeol has settled. His ears still swivel about on top of his head, but he is more attentive to the way Yixing is limping. They pad quietly through this new forest. Chanyeol does not know exactly where they’re going, and very distantly, he worries that Yixing does not, either.

Right in this moment, though, he is nothing more than an alpha traveling with his omega. Every once in awhile, his tail wags as he reflects on that.

 

When Chanyeol had first set out after Yixing, he had worried that food and water would not be so plentiful where they are going. He had feared that before they found whatever Yixing was searching for, they would find hunger and exhaustion and thirst.

Not a full day after they have fled their homes and entered unknown territory, the skies open and let down the rains of autumn. Chanyeol had worried for water; now, it comes to them in great torrents. Shelter is not impossible to come by, but it slows their movement and complicates hunting on these new grounds and more than anything, it drags the temperature lower and lower each day that it rains.

It has been three days when Yixing and Chanyeol find a small cave. Inside, there is the stale scent of much larger beasts, but they only find rodents inside. They eat as wolves, whose bellies are much more easily satisfied with raw meat, and they take to curling up together with their furs on for warmth. Chanyeol sees more of Yixing and his wolf in these few days that they are trapped in by rain than he thinks he has in an entire year. He notices the way that Yixing’s muzzle is just a slightly lighter black than the rest of his fur, hinting towards grayness in a few years. He learns the way his ears flick before turning towards sound when he hears something, and the individual flecks of gold in his eyes.

But he sees little of Yixing’s mind, and his thoughts, and his intentions. For all the time they spend in that cave, they spend almost none of it as men. It is safer to be wolves for now. Chanyeol can see Yixing’s apprehension and unease whenever he begins to pull his fur back, revealing his face, so he does not do it. Only when the rains stop and they are free to continue through the chilled dampness of the forest do they show their cheeks to the wind. Chanyeol has brought no other clothes than the fur around his shoulders. Yixing is just as bare as he is. They walk close together in bodies that are small and thin but more enduring than those that they wear as wolves.

Chanyeol, though he is the alpha among them, follows Yixing’s lead. Yixing moves in a slow, straight path. Chanyeol sniffs the wind sometimes; when the leaves above their heads are thinner or when they find a clearing, he looks up towards the stars. Still, he does not know where they are going, or why they are going this way. The silence has settled so deep that it has permeated even their time spent as men. Sometimes, Yixing hisses when he rubs his ruined shoulder, but he makes no other noises.

Chanyeol feels as though he is breaking glass when he says, “We’ve traveled a long ways.”

They have. They have been walking for days, barely stopping to hunt and eat. Chanyeol is too wary of leaving Yixing alone, and Yixing is too inexperienced to take along hunting. Chanyeol’s belly has cried more than Yixing’s, for he passes along the meatiest pieces of the rodents and birds that they catch. Still, Yixing’s gait has slowed and his eyes have hollowed in his hunger.

Perhaps, then, Yixing is not silent as a reflection of his temperament, but because he is tired. In response to Chanyeol’s observation, he merely hums and nods his head. Chanyeol sighs and lowers his gaze to the forest floor. “Are you certain of our heading?” he asks. With the way Yixing has been leading, he expects a quick, assured affirmative. He awaits the confidence in Yixing’s voice, but is startled to hear nothing at all. He turns his head to gaze upon Yixing, whose face is pinched. “Yixing?” he asks. Yixing slows, and then ceases walking altogether. He sighs, but he says nothing.

“Where are we going,” Chanyeol demands. Yixing glances up at him, but he is not the pup he once was. Though he looks up to see Chanyeol’s eyes, he looks up firmly. He meets Chanyeol’s gaze and challenges it.

“I’m determining that as we go,” he says. Chanyeol huffs an incredulous breath. Any more humor and it would be a laugh. He runs a hand through his hair, and then again. He clasps them together behind his head and turns in a circle, searching wildly around them for anything that looks familiar.

“As we go?” he cries. “Yixing, do you even know where we are?”

“We’re exactly where we should be. We’ve been traveling north this whole time, we should—”

“I don’t want to know where we _should_ be, Yixing, I want to know where we _are_ ,” Chanyeol shouts. Birds flee from the trees around them. His voice echoes through the woods.

“I’m telling you, we’re right where we need to be. Don’t you trust me?” Yixing asks, equally angry and half as loud.

Chanyeol’s chest rises and falls greatly. He glares down at Yixing, who glares up at him. His outburst leaves him tired. He has been tired this whole time. He is the first to break their stare. To his side, he can hear Yixing approaching slowly. When he lays a hand on Chanyeol’s shoulder, Chanyeol is not surprised to find him so close. Instead, he turns to bury his face against Yixing. Yixing accepts him, wrapping his arms around Chanyeol’s neck and cradling him like he would a child. Chanyeol sighs into it.

“I do,” Chanyeol finally says. He asks Yixing if they will go any further tonight. Silently, Yixing shakes his head. They settle down where they stand, Yixing never letting go of Chanyeol the entire time.

 

They have wandered through the forest for days when it finally breaks. A large swath of grassland cuts a broad crescent shape through the expanse of forest about them. Here, the greenery has all but faded. Only those trees that persist during the winter have retained their shape and colors. Everything else has brightened into golds and reds. The fields before them have paled into dry, soft yellows. They crush and break underfoot. Small pockets of trees dot the land, modest oases of pine and golden shelter. When the rain falls, this is where they sit. The tall grasses rustle beneath the weight of the rain; neither Chanyeol nor Yixing know that anyone is approaching, until they arrive.

A woman who comes to them as a fox flinches when Chanyeol growls at her. She pins her ears back and tucks her tail between her legs, but she does not scamper back out into the open rain. Chanyeol’s fur rises in a ridge. Yixing ducks below him, letting Chanyeol’s body cover him. Chanyeol takes one large step towards the fox, who pulls her fur back from her face and is still a small thing. Her flaming hair and flaming eyes fade seamlessly into the autumn surrounding her.

"You're in danger," she shouts over the rain and Chanyeol's growling. Chanyeol silences, staring her down. He has almost decided to kill her despite her warning when Yixing leans up, licking at the underside of his jaw. His tail thumps the ground. He whines a little. With a deathly anger about him, Chanyeol pulls his fur from his head. The fox’s eyes glimmer curiously.

“What do you mean?” Chanyeol demands.

“There are wolves looking for you,” she says.

“Who are you?” Yixing asks.

“And how do you know?” Chanyeol demands.

“Seungwan the fox,” she says to Yixing. She turns her narrowed gaze on Chanyeol, who towers over her. “There are men from the pack just south of these lands hunting a white wolf traveling with a black mate,” she says to Chanyeol. “But of course, perhaps it is not you after all.” Her voice is light. Buoyant. Mocking. Chanyeol snarls at her. Yixing grabs his arm and holds him still.

“Why now?” he asks Chanyeol. “It’s been days…”

“To kill their Alpha, who left no child and no lineage,” she interrupts. “The first to return with his throat will have power over the pack.” Her lips have curved into a smirk. Chanyeol seethes. Foxes have always taken delight in the cruelest of things. This time, when he lunges for her, Yixing lets him go. She shrieks, though it could be laughter, and peels away on four legs. Chanyeol does not chase her past the nearby tree line, letting her run out into the rain alone. When he turns back to Yixing, he is saddened by what he sees. Whatever hope and determination had existed on Yixing’s face these few days of travel, it has fallen like water from his skin.

“Yixing, she could be lying,” Chanyeol tells him. “She could be tricking us. Or she could be wrong. We don’t even know that they’re headed this way, they could have lost the trail in the forest—”

“Chanyeol,” Yixing murmurs. Chanyeol quiets immediately. Though their hunters are several days behind them, the wet conditions will only have preserved whatever scent trail they left. They have traveled north without deviation since they escaped their last chase. They will be easier to catch than any prey every hunted on their own land. Chanyeol sets his jaw firmly and buries his face into Yixing’s bad shoulder. Yixing flinches, but Chanyeol does nothing except smell him. The bite is healing well for how ugly it is. Chanyeol slides his hand up Yixing’s bare back, cradled between his shoulders.

“We have to keep moving,” he says.

“It’s still raining,” Yixing protests. Chanyeol lifts his head wearily. He is tired and hungry and scared. He would like nothing more than to lay down a home here, in this copse, where he and Yixing may live and die together, childless and alone, but content.

But their trail is strong and straight, and they have a ways to go and no clear heading. Yixing sighs and kisses Chanyeol softly, the first time their lips have touched since they first fled, and they both find their furs, covering their thin skins with that which makes them wild. The rain beats at them, but they put their heads down and bear through it. Yixing leads, and Chanyeol follows.

 

“We can’t be far,” Yixing tells Chanyeol that very night. The grassland is ending soon. The forest curves back around to meet them, coming closer and closer into view. Tonight, they sleep under the stars, curled together for warmth. “We’ve traveled so long,” Yixing tells him. “I know that they’ll be on this side of the mountain.”

Chanyeol, who has not even smelled another pack in days, hums his acknowledgement to indulge him. He isn’t sure that they’re headed towards anything. He thinks that they could run forever, if only they could run without being chased. Yixing swears that there is a pack whose path they will cross, a pack that will not kill them or harm them or turn them over to those who wish to do so. Tonight, it feels like a story to comfort crying pups. Yixing lies against Chanyeol’s chest and mumbles words of hope. Chanyeol falls into another restless sleep, listening to them as though they were a lullaby.

 

Their several days’ lead becomes a gap only the length of a day. Chanyeol and Yixing both raise their ears and hear barking on the wind. They quicken their pace, but they are already traveling quickly. Exhaustion will set in soon—from hunger, from sleepless nights, from the wears of running from home. The fear of being chased lights a new desire to live within both of them, but this flicker will only light their way for so many steps. They have come further up the mountain than any wolf from their pack before them, and still they must climb higher. The question is no longer whether they will be caught, but when. Chanyeol’s heart is heavy when he bounds past Yixing, turning to face him and cutting him short.

He pulls his fur over his head and, before Yixing even has time to do the same, he says, “You have to go on ahead.”

Yixing is still for a moment. Slowly, he lowers onto his front paws. He drops down completely. When he shows his face to Chanyeol, he is kneeling. “What are you saying?” he asks, his voice low. Chanyeol swallows thickly. His eyes sting. He lowers himself down to Yixing’s level.

“They’re coming for my throat,” Chanyeol tells him. “They’re going to catch me soon. I don’t want you to be here when they do.” When he knows that he will not be pushed away, he reaches forward, pulling Yixing close to him. Yixing goes eagerly into his arms. “I love you,” Chanyeol says. “I always have. I only ever wanted to take care of you, and I’ve failed until today.” Yixing lifts his head. Chanyeol noses at his throat instead of meeting his eyes.

“Today, I want you to find the pack you’re looking for. Tell them you’re pregnant, tell them I’m coming for you, tell them whatever you have to.” Yixing pushes Chanyeol away so that he can look at him. He’s crying. Chanyeol holds his face and dries his tears. The cries of the wolves pursuing them echo closer and closer. “Go ahead of me,” Chanyeol pleads. “I’ll catch up with you if I can.”

“Chanyeol,” Yixing whispers. There is so much in his eyes, so much in the way his mouth works wordlessly, so much in the way he clings at Chanyeol’s white fur, soon to be stained with his own blood. But Yixing says nothing. His nose flares as he fights his tears, fights his sobs, fights to keep silent. Chanyeol reaches for Yixing’s fur. Yixing lets him pull it over his head, but it merely sits on him. Yixing refuses to wear it just yet. He grabs Chanyeol by the hair and yanks him forward. Their lips meet painfully between them, teeth gnashing and biting so hard that Yixing will feel this kiss for weeks after Chanyeol is dead.

When Chanyeol pushes Yixing away, Yixing dutifully begins to retreat. His tail is tucked. His ears are low. His head hangs close to the ground. Chanyeol snaps at him, but Yixing is no longer the type of omega to heed an alpha’s command. He lingers, tail wagging whenever their eyes catch. Chanyeol snarls at him, bodily chasing him towards the cover of the forest before turning to face the oncoming attack. If the pack Yixing seeks is close, then maybe he could reach it today. Maybe he could reach it while Chanyeol fights to his very death. Maybe he could reach it without being chased and dragged back to where Chanyeol and his first alpha await him in the hereafter.

With all of Yixing’s hope in his heart. Chanyeol lifts his head and howls. Now, his hunters know where to find him.

But so will every other wolf within ear’s distance.

Chanyeol lifts his eyes to the moon and asks for mercy. Not for himself, but for Yixing. _Let those who will help him find him_ , he begs her. _Let those who would hurt him rot._ The patter of footfalls from a few wolves breaks over the clearing. In the distance, by the light of a waning moon, Chanyeol can see them coming. The fastest of them bounds ahead of them. Chanyeol sees this wolf and recognizes her markings. He’s hunted with her before. Her teeth are bared, and she will not let him skitter about her as they appraise one another.

She will attack him, and he may die.

She comes with enough speed to bowl him over. He rolls in the dead grass, digging his feet into the ground so that he does not wind up on his back, but that’s how she gets him. He bats at her face, shoving her off with all of the power in his thighs. Not far enough away, he can hear Yixing barking and whining. Chanyeol yelps as she gets her teeth around his leg and pulls. Chanyeol snaps back just close enough to her face to get her off of him.

It isn’t enough. Just as soon as he’s got his legs under him, she’s charging again, throwing him down onto his back and snarling and snapping and shoving. Chanyeol writhes and twists to get away from her, but she’s stronger. So much stronger. And he’s tired, so tired. Chanyeol bites her ear hard enough to tear it. When she jerks away from him, he lifts his head in a howl. _Go_ , he thinks, _Yixing, go._ His throat is open. He’s going to die. He’s going to die.

She falls on him. The attack on his throat never comes. Instead, he’s kicked and crushed and rolled over and over as another wolf falls upon them. Chanyeol’s heart skips a beat, and he thinks that he will be torn from the front and from behind. He curls up and yips and bats away from the struggle, which rolls on without him. He stares as a wolf he does not recognize gnashes into his attacker. She cries and screeches and tries to squirm away, but the new wolf holds her down and tears until she is dead. Chanyeol breathes heavily, flinching away when the new wolf swings his gaze over. As soon as he has his feet under him, Chanyeol backs away. The new wolf wags his tail and watches.

The rustling of grass behind Chanyeol has him swinging around, teeth bared. Two more wolves Chanyeol does not recognize approach him, their muzzles stained with blood. They stop before they can come too close. The first of them drops his fur, watching Chanyeol warily as though staring at a rabid wolf.

“Are you the one who called?” The curve of his mouth is more foxlike than anything, and Chanyeol does not trust the wicked slant of his eyes. The next wolf drops his fur and levels Chanyeol with a round, doe-like gaze. He says nothing. Chanyeol looks back towards the tawny wolf who saved his life. His golden skin glows nobly in the moonlight. He takes a single step towards Chanyeol, who flinches again. He looks beyond this wolf, off towards where Yixing is standing a ways off. Chanyeol looks him over as well as he can; he is unharmed.

Yixing pulls his fur back, and Chanyeol is the last of them left standing as a wolf. Yixing walks towards them, though Chanyeol wishes he would run away. Far, far away. But with three sets of strange eyes on him, he does not dare say so. He merely holds his ground, waiting for a single one of them to even cast a menacing gaze towards Yixing.

His ears swing forward in his surprise when Yixing speaks. “Lu Han?” he asks quietly. One of the wolves behind Chanyeol, with round eyes and a long neck, sits forward. He stares hard at Yixing before breaking into a smile. Chanyeol steps into his path before he can bound forward, but his pleasure with seeing Yixing is evident all the same.

Though Chanyeol can intercept this strange wolf, he cannot stop Yixing, who darts past him with ease. Lu Han accepts Yixing into his arms. Chanyeol growls; the other two wolves lift their heads warily. Chanyeol shrinks away, but he cannot quiet himself. Yixing turns back to him after a moment, kneeling before Chanyeol. He cradles his head, thumbs stroking at his jaw, and he pulls Chanyeol’s head down to nuzzle. “Chanyeol, this is it. This is them. This is the pack.”

Hesitantly, Chanyeol pulls his fur back. He lifts his face from Yixing’s hands and looks at them. They all stare at him and Yixing, their eyes wide, their mouths beginning to curl from neutrality into soft smiles. Chanyeol wraps an arm around Yixing’s waist and draws him close. Yixing’s eyes are wet. Chanyeol rocks him from side to side. His heart still hammers away. His arm hurts where it has been torn into. He is too aware of everything around him.

He does not feel safe yet, but Yixing tells him that they are. And so they are.

 

Lu Han’s pack is nomadic. Yixing tells of him their meeting so many years ago that the last of Chanyeol’s family had still been alive. A wanderer from a pack of wanderers, he came too near to Yixing’s pack when Yixing wandered too far. Lu Han knows of their pack. Knows of their practices. Knows of their late Alpha. He speaks for them in front of his brethren, who lead them to where the rest are waiting. Yixing and Chanyeol lean against one another, hungry and hurting and exhausted.

The walk is not far. Dawn is coming when Chanyeol smells fire and meat and other wolves. Ere long, he can hear voices. The sky is streaked with color when the camp finally comes into view. Chanyeol is shocked by how many wolves are awake at such an hour. He is shocked that the only clothing they wear is the fur of their wolves. He is shocked by their dwellings, none larger or stronger than the other. More than anything, he is shocked by the size of the pack.

There can’t be more than a dozen wolves altogether. This is a pack the likes of which Chanyeol has never known. He looks to Yixing, whose mother came from a pack like this, but Yixing’s eyes are also filled with wonder. Every wolf in the pack lifts its head as they approach, appraising this motley assortment of familiar and unknown. Every wolf in the pack bears its skin, clean and unmarked. Chanyeol is suddenly very aware of his bite, of Yixing’s destroyed claim, of the wound on his arm and shoulder.

“You have to see Yifan,” Lu Han says, breaking Chanyeol’s trance. He’s stopped, turning to face Chanyeol completely. Though he is smaller than Chanyeol, his gaze holds an authority that Chanyeol’s never will. He turns it on Yixing, who stands a bit more upright beneath the scrutiny. “And you will both need to see the healer.”

Hesitantly, Chanyeol hands Yixing off to Lu Han. Before he lets him go, Chanyeol kisses him desperately. Once on his mouth, and then once on his head. “I’ll be with you soon,” he says, watching as Yixing is led towards one of the tents. He turns to the other wolves, who lead him in a different direction. They crouch before the opening of another tent, calling to the wolf inside. Chanyeol waits a short distance back, shocked when a small wolf with a broad chest and round eyes crawls out sleepily.

“Who’s this?” he asks, his voice deeper than it would seem. Chanyeol shrinks away from him.

“The wolf that called,” says one of Chanyeol’s escorts. “He’s here to speak with Yifan.”

The new wolf says nothing, merely hums. He stares hard at Chanyeol, who tries to stare back. Before he can break away, the new wolf nods and slips off towards where other wolves have gathered. Chanyeol’s escorts beckon him forward, through the flap of the tent. Inside, it is dark. A shadow moves—long limbs, Chanyeol sees. Tall. A man. He lights a flame, bringing his face into view. It is strong, his gaze heavy and wise, but he is also puffy from sleep. His fur hangs around his shoulders. Not a man, then, but a wolf. Chanyeol stares on silently.

“You called for help,” the wolf says. _Yifan_ , Chanyeol thinks. He nods. Inhales slowly, quietly, and is overwhelmed. _Alpha_ , he thinks. Yifan looks him over lazily, his gaze falling over Chanyeol with gravity. He follows the white hair down to the bloody mouth, down to the injured shoulder and the stained fur wrapped around him like a blanket. If Chanyeol had ever sought to present himself so humbly, he never thought he would do it like this.  
"You're young," Yifan says. Tentatively and silently, Chanyeol nods. "As is your mate?" Yifan asks.

"He was born two springs before me," Chanyeol tells him. Yifan hums and sits back in his furs. He is the icon of tranquil confidence. All long lines and sharp eyes and subtle threats. Chanyeol wishes to pull his fur over himself, if only so he may shrink and show his respect properly.

"Tell me then," Yifan commands, interrupting Chanyeol's pity, "how two strong young wolves find themselves hunted in the wilderness— _my_ wilderness—until they come to spill blood in my path?"

Chanyeol feels the air leave his lungs. He stares on in horror at the way Yifan's face twists with displeasure. He pulls his dirty fur up to cover his shoulder, but he is hiding nothing. He lowers his eyes to the floor and wonders what he should tell. What, out of everything that has happened since the last time autumn stained the world red and gold, could possibly save his and Yixing's lives?

There is nothing, and so he tells everything.

They are killers. They are conspirators. They are adulterers and they are broken. They have been broken by others, and they have stomped their own pieces until they were crushed. They are as they come: young, ignorant, dirty, and tired. Chanyeol tells Yifan everything—of the hurt they endured and the hurt that they produced—and he speaks without stopping until he has come to where he sits in this very moment. Yifan takes pause after witnessing his story. Chanyeol has not eaten in a day, but in his fear, he still feels that he could become sick.

"You seek refuge, then?" Yifan asks mildly. His eyes have softened since Chanyeol first entered. Chanyeol is just a child before him, though he has been an alpha for a full turn of four seasons. Chanyeol knows that he is pitiful, but if pity will save Yixing, then he will cast away his pride as though it were poison. With his head down, he nods and hopes that Yifan is benevolent enough to grant them the protection they need.

Yifan breathes in deeply. Chanyeol hears the rustling of furs and glances up to find him rising. Sitting upright, he is tall, so tall, that even Chanyeol feels modest. Yifan looks down at him with a fierce tenderness in his eyes. "You will stay, if that is what you wish to do."

Chanyeol breathes as though he has been long submerged. He looks up towards Yifan, left dumb in the wake of his gratitude. Yifan takes his silence to continue. “I know of your old pack, Chanyeol,” Yifan tells him. “I have heard many stories as I have passed over this side of the mountain, and each year seems to bring accounts more troubling than the last. I have warned my omegas not to wander too close to that territory. I have kept my pups closer in the months that we pass by.

“Lu Han was lucky, all those years ago, to have only been discovered by your mate,” Yifan tells Chanyeol, who had never known of other packs having quarrel with his. “Others in our pack were not so fortunate.” Chanyeol swallows thickly, bowing his head repentantly. He would carry the sins of the pack that hunted him, only if Yifan will forgive them. Only if they will be pardoned and Yixing will be cared for. Chanyeol holds his breath. “If an alpha from that pack so much as crosses my path, the punishment will be death.” Yifan leans forward, a looming shadow in the flickering darkness of the tent. Chanyeol gasps. “If you cannot show me that you are a different kind of alpha than that which produced you, you will be sent back.”

He sits back. Chanyeol unfolds slowly, sitting upright once more. He hesitates, but in the end, he meets Yifan’s eyes. He nods. Yifan almost smiles. “Go,” he says. “Ask Kyungsoo to take you to your mate.”

Chanyeol crawls out of the tent eagerly. On the other side, the wolf from Yifan’s tent awaits him. He looks Chanyeol up and down before turning and silently leading the way to another tent. Inside this one, a fire burns in a pit at the center. Several wolves are gathered around Yixing, who is eating. He drops his food when he sees Chanyeol, standing and stumbling towards him. The wolves around him raise their arms to hold him steady, but it is unnecessary. Chanyeol is there in a breath, catching Yixing and hugging him close. “You were right,” he tells him. Yixing strokes his hair and kisses his face and holds him when Chanyeol begins to tremble and cry. “You were right.”

 

Chanyeol spends too many nights awake. The smallest noises disturb him. His eyes will not close again until morning light breaks across the sky. He hears things that are not there, he mishears things that are. He is an alpha, a grown wolf with a mate and a home and furs upon which they lay their heads and a pit where they build their fires. He has a pack, one that knows his name and the moon he was birthed under. Still, his pack mates look upon him with pity.

Yixing still flinches whenever Chanyeol moves too quickly. He shies away from raised voices and raised hands. He is wary around these new omegas, who open their arms to him unconditionally. His responsibilities are new, and the way he performs them is more than he can learn in the few weeks they have been here. “I’ve never gathered before,” Yixing tells Chanyeol when he brings home a handful of berries and roots. Chanyeol tries to show Yixing how proud he is, but Yixing lowers his head against the praise most days.

Winter creeps slowly over the mountain. Chanyeol and Yixing learn how to pull their home out of the ground and carry it further south, where they will be able to eat during the heavier days of snow. They carry their home, and they carry themselves. Chanyeol relearns what it is to be an alpha. Yixing relearns what it is to be himself.

 

The first snow has just fallen, soft and frigid beneath their feet, when the healer asks to see Yixing’s stomach. Yixing is reluctant, but Junmyeon is insistent. Chanyeol follows his mate into the healer’s tent, his tail wagging behind him calmly. Yixing lies on his back, letting Junmyeon feel and press and listen, staring up at the skins above him with a sour look twisted into his features. He is sensitive to being touched like this, but Junmyeon insists, and so he lies quietly. Chanyeol is very close to crawling forward and pushing his head beneath Yixing’s hand when Junmyeon breaks the silence. “Ah,” he sighs, grinning happily. Yixing peers up at him, but he says nothing more. Chanyeol crawls close to them, cocking his head.

“Junmyeon,” Yixing begins, his voice trembling. Winter has come gently for them. For an entire week, Yixing has slept in Chanyeol’s arms free of nightmares. Chanyeol has slept through the night. During they day, they have each found a purpose, and in the evenings they find each other.

But Yixing is fragile. The warble in Yixing’s worried voice is so weak, so helpless. Junmyeon does not seem to hear it, but Chanyeol does. Junmyeon holds Yixing’s stomach in his hand, cupped around it, and Chanyeol begins to see. The usually flat plane of his abdomen is round. Not spectacularly, and not so suddenly that either he or Yixing noticed anything was particularly different. Chanyeol noted only a few mornings ago that it felt quite firm in his hand for how undefined it looked in the sunlight. But instead of inspecting it, he had only stroked it peacefully, willing Yixing to sleep for just awhile longer.

Now, his tail thumps the ground. He keeps his head low, trying not to excite himself. He could be wrong, he could be completely wrong. He noses at Yixing’s flank, noses up to where Junmyeon rests his hand, but Chanyeol knows that he could be wrong. His tail wags harder. Junmyeon just smiles. Yixing’s face is creased, as though he might cry. He stares hard at Junmyeon. “What is it?” he asks.

“I believe you had told me that you are barren,” Junmyeon teases him. Perhaps it is meant to be playful, but it comes across cruel. Yixing flinches. Even then, Chanyeol cannot settle down. He whines and begins to wag his body with his tail. Tears are spilling over Yixing’s face. Junmyeon offers him an apologetic frown. He cups Yixing’s face and dries his tears. “You were wrong, Yixing. You were wrong.”

Yixing clings to Junmyeon’s hands, shaking his head and closing his eyes and crying. Chanyeol jumps, barking, skittering around the fire. He comes back to Yixing naked, dropping down beside him on two legs, pulling him out of Junmyeon’s hands and into his arms. Yixing holds onto him. They rock together, dancing in joy, dancing in sorrow, dancing together. When they part, Chanyeol reaches down to hold Yixing’s stomach. He can feel it now, everything he couldn’t feel the other morning. When these pups come out, they will be as white as their father. Chanyeol looks up to Yixing, who is still crying, but he is smiling.

“My omega,” he says, stroking a thumb across Yixing’s cheek. “My pretty omega.” Yixing flushes, smiling brighter. He cups Chanyeol’s hand close to his face. Chanyeol strokes a hand down his arm. “My strong omega,” he says, breathlessly. His hand finds Yixing’s stomach once more. “My _fertile_ omega,” Chanyeol exhales, all of the air gone from his lungs.

This moment of joy is so much more so because it is theirs. They have been hurt so badly that Chanyeol thinks they will never completely forget their pain. They have been broken so profoundly that they will never shed their scars. When they touch one another, it is too easy to recall the wrongs they have done, the sins they have committed. There was nothing of life between them; only survival.

Chanyeol holds Yixing’s stomach reverently. Yixing holds Chanyeol’s face. If the pups come out brown, or if they come out any other color, Chanyeol will still love them. He knows that they will come out white, but they could come out as anything other than wolves, and he would still love them. They have already brought life back into Yixing’s smile, wonder back into his eyes. Chanyeol stares down at his mate, transfixed. Yixing, still sobbing, draws him into an embrace.

If Junmyeon is still with him, neither of them can see. Here, there is only them. There has always been only them.


End file.
